[45] OYSTER-CULTURE UPON SHORES OF BRITISH CHANNEL. 717 



perimeiiters attributed this waste to the too great saltness of the water 

 which had reached such a point that it deposited crystals of salt upon 

 the mariue jilants contained in the basin. The failure was notorious. 

 The experiments were abandoned, the oysters removed, and the area of 

 water converted into a fish pond. From this time they neglected to 

 prevent the mixing of the fresh waters of the brook, to which I have 

 referred, with the sea-water in the canal. Some time afterward, in raking 

 over the bottom, they found some forgotten oysters. They perceived 

 that they had grown most surprisingly. There were found traces of 

 spawn in the vicinity of the gate and of the springs which burst out 

 here and there upon the edges. 



This event, entirely accidental, was a revelation which put the MM. 

 de Montauge upon the way to the truth. Some hundred oysters were 

 again deposited in the basin, and collecting apparatus arranged around 

 them became loaded with spawn. 



It has been denied that these embryons came from the specimens 

 that were the subject of experiment. From what source, then, could 

 they have come? No pare of reproduction existed in the neighbor- 

 hood. The waves, which in such case must have served as the vehicle 

 for their transportation, traversed several kilometers of crassats before 

 penetrating this establishment, and on this long passage across tide- 

 flats under the summer sun, the sea-water is so heated that spawn loses 

 all vitality there. Again, they have objected that if these waters were 

 too warm to present to embryons the normal conditions of existence, 

 how could they serve to preserve the spawn of captive oysters. The 

 explanation of this is not difficult to find if we remember that they per- 

 mitted the fresh waters from the brook, already referred to, to flow into 

 the canal of the establishment, and these by their coolness lowered the 

 temperature of the salt water. 



In a second experiment, the MM. de Montaug6, with the object of 

 determining what was the influence of the heat of the sun ux)on the 

 development of the oyster, placed in a portion of their basin earth ex- 

 tracted from the pares of Oleron. Oysters of the same size and age 

 were placed upon this earth and others by the side of them upon the 

 ordinary soil of the bottom. The result was that the growth of all of 

 them was very nearly equal; but the first were in better condition, were 

 more wrinkled and more strongly ribbed. 



All oyster-culturists know that very great cold and frost are to be 

 esteemed among the most terrible enemies of the oyster. The proprie- 

 tors of the establishment of Saint Joseph possess a basin containing 

 200,000 oysters. The basin having been frozen over, the MM. de Mon- 

 taug^ immediately caused the water to be renewed and the reservoir 

 to be covered with straw and hay. This means succeeded, and only 100 

 of the oysters were affected by the freezing. 



I may not leave the establishment of Saint-Joseph without noting an 

 observation which is of peculiar interest. In the pares much exj^osed 



