257 



Notes on Oyster Culture. 



By 

 G. Herbert Fowler, B.A.Oxoii., Ph.D. 



With Plate XXI. 



I. Oyster Farming 'in Holland. 



While on a visit to Holland last December, I took advantage of 

 tlie opportunity to learn something of the extent and methods of 

 oyster culture there practised. - To Mr. C. J. Bottemanne, of Bergen- 

 op-Zoom, the Inspector of Fisheries, and to Prof. A. A. W. Hubrecht, 

 of Utrecht and his published papers, I desire to acknowledge my 

 indebtedness. 



Though the invention of the modern system of culture is to be 

 credited to France, it is at present carried to its highest perfection 

 on the Eastern Schelde, in the Dutch province of Zeeland. This, 

 no doubt, is partly attributable to the fact that the geographical 

 conditions are here almost ideally perfect for the purpose. Originally 

 continuous with the Western Schelde, but now for many years cut 

 off from it by the railway embankment (see map on PI. XXI), the 

 Eastern Schelde forms a quiet, almost land-locked, shallow bay, 

 about twenty miles in length, which at low tide leaves acres of good 

 hard ground exposed on both sides of its bed. There are two other 

 exceptional advantages in this position : the one, that on the ebb 

 tide the main bulk of the water lying in the extremity of the bay is 

 never lost in the sea, so that the floating spat of the oyster, though 

 carried down by the tide, is swept up again into the bay and 

 over the collectors placed to catch it, without ever reaching open 

 water; the other, that on the stone bases of the dykes, within 

 546 yards (500 metres) of which no one is allowed to dredge for fear 

 that their foundations should be injured and the country be flooded, 

 are at certain points enormous natural colonies of oysters, which pro- 

 vide every year a plentiful supply of spat for the artificial cultiva- 

 tion. The fact, also, that much of the land lies below high-water 

 mark and is surrounded by dykes, makes it easy and cheap to con- 

 struct store-ponds, &c., on shore, and to admit salt water through 

 sluices. Beside, however, these natural advantages, there are fur- 

 ther reasons for the success of the Dutch oyster culture : the patient 



