OUR FISHES AND THEIR ENEMIES—AMBROSE. 401 
oyster is in four years developed from the spat to marketable 
size, and in the meantime is nourished without cost to its owners. 
It is, moreover, a sure crop, if guarded with ordinary care; and 
there are abundant locations for oyster culture in the sheltered 
bays and estuaries bordering on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The 
bed should be covered with tidal water, from one to six fathoms 
deep. Such bottoms as these are Government property, and the 
price of licenses to occupy them would yield an annual revenue 
more than sufficient to pay for their thorough protection, whilst 
conserving a great public benefit. But in the present unprotec- 
ted state of the fishery, no one will venture on oyster culture. 
When at Shediac in March, 1887, I saw gangs of men with 
machinery propelled by horses scooping up dead oyster-shells and 
weed in large quantities for agricultural purposes, and was then 
informed that the vast quantities of oysters in those old beds 
have perished through their own fecundity, being either smother- 
ed or frozen, as I have already described. But, on enquiry, I 
found that all attempts at oyster planting in other parts of Shediac 
harbour had been frustrated by the interference of people living 
on the opposite shore. The hurdles placed for catching the float- 
ing spat had been pulled up, and the planted oysters taken out. 
Lobsters were literally crawling in vast numbers near our 
shores but a few years ago. Very few canneries were then in 
Operation. One was started, however, on a pretty vigorous scale 
at Sambro, by an American. There being then no legal protection 
against over-fishing, large and small, light and gravid, were 
canned, and soon—as I was informed by fishermen on the spot— 
the lobsters in-shore began to diminish in number very rapidly, 
as also to exhibit fewer individuals of large size, so that it 
became necessary to sink the traps much further from shore. 
This was an indication that the factory was rapidly cutting off 
the supply at head quarters, for these creatures invariably have 
the habit of coming in from deep water outside so soon as the 
tenants of coveted holes along shore are out of the way. The 
fishermen conversing with me at that time—when as yet canning 
on our shores was in its infancy, and lobsters in other harbours 
were abundant—predicted that the system pursued at Sambro, 
