204. THE WORLD OF THE SEA. 
selves to the submerged roots of the mangrove trees; the Indians 
detach the roots, and thus carry to market branches of oysters. 
The idea of cultivating oysters is certainly anything but new. 
According to Pliny, Sergius Orata was the first who put oyster 
cultivation into practice, and in the time of the orator Lucius 
Crassus, he established an oyster park at Baiz. He noticed the 
superior flavour of the bivalves of the Lucrine Lake—for then, 
as now, tradesmen speculated on the weaknesses of human gour- 
mandism—and with these he supplied his customers. Sergius has 
the honour of being the inventor of a new industry, which to-day 
occupies thousands; and the centuries which have passed since the 
Roman lived have not improved upon his plan. Asa proof of the 
perfection to which he brought oyster culture, his contemporaries 
said of him—in allusion to the hanging banks which he invented 
—that if he were hindered from rearing oysters in the Lucrine 
Lake, he would make them grow on the roofs of the houses! 
What has become of this famous lake, the first oyster park in the 
world? Alas! it exists no longer; it has all but disappeared. A 
traveller, who was an accomplished gourmand, paid a visit to 
the celebrated lake; he says, “It is now nothing but a filthy 
puddle. The precious oysters which were placed there by 
Catiline’s grandfather—an act which, in our eyes, greatly qualifies 
the doings of the grandson—are metamorphosed into miserable 
eels, which wriggle through the mud. A villanous mountain 
of cinders, and‘ scoriz, and pumice-stone, which thought proper, 
in 1538, to leap out of the earth in one night, like a mushroom, 
reduced this poor lake to its present sad condition.” 
Rondelet also speaks of a fisherman who understood the 
art of oyster culture. 
The Neapolitan lake, Fusaro—the terrible Acheron of the 
poets—is a great oyster park, where Art is made effectually to aid 
Nature in the multiplication of her products. All along its shores 
are built up round blocks of rocks, upon which are placed oysters 
from the Gulf of Taranto, and thus each is transformed into a 
little bank, round which, for protection’s sake, are driven piles of 
wood ; the tops of the piles rise above the water, and so mark 
the position of the bank, from which the oysters can be taken by 
