198 Mr. Howard Martin on Oysters. 
natural and partly artificial; (3) foreshores on which ‘‘col- 
lectors”’ are placed to receive spat washed to them by the tides ; 
(4) enclosed ponds supplied with sea-water by sluices. Oyster 
fishing on the natural banks consists in dredging up the oysters 
and taking them to market. This is extremely hard work. On 
the second class of fisheries dredging is necessary to keep them 
clean, and they must be kept supplied with ‘‘ collectors.”’ Oysters 
will live a long while out of water if laid on their round shells, 
and if not exposed to frost will travel very well. I believe there 
are few or none of the fisheries in which floating spat is collected 
on foreshores in Great Britain ; there are many on the west coast 
of France. 
There have been several successful attempts in England to 
establish oyster fisheries in enclosed ponds. The most important 
are Hayling Island, Herne Bay, Brading, Lymington, Cowes, and 
Newtown in the Isle of Wight. The ponds are enclosed with 
embankments of earth, in which sluices are fixed to allow of the 
passage of the sea-water. The bottom is formed of chalk or 
shingle, quite clean. The parent oysters are laid in a broad 
ganeway across the centre of the ponds, and the ponds are fitted 
up with ‘collectors.’ The water is usually about four or five 
feet in depth. 
The probable causes of the present scarcity of oysters are (1) 
that a succession of cold and windy summers killed the spat, or 
(2) that the increase of demand so stimulated the greed of the 
fishermen that they completely dredged away many oyster banks. 
The second explanation is probably correct, because oysters have 
been produced and attached to the ‘‘collectors’’ in large numbers 
when the temperature was by no means above the average, nor 
the weather in any way specially favourable. On the other 
hand, oyster-beds have been completely dredged away : one from 
the Channel south of Brighton; one three miles from the pier at 
Ramsay, in the Isle of Man; and one off the Dudgeon Light- 
house; and it is said there has been no quantity of Channel 
oysters since 1849. The great scarcity of the better class of 
oysters appears to have begun about 1858, and a marked rise in 
price accompanied the falling off of the supply. In 1855 natives 
fetched 41s. a bushel, in 1870 £10 2s. a bushel. It seems to be 
a well-established fact that when once a natural deep-sea oyster- 
bed has been depopulated it never stocks itself again. Before a 
close time was legally established oysters were dredged up and 
sent to market at the time when they contained their eggs, and 
young oysters were killed before they had spatted at all. 
