XXI.-REPORT TO THE MINISTER OF THE MARINE RELATIVE 

 TO OYSTER-CULTURE UPON THE SHORES OF THE BRITISH 

 CHANNEL AND THE OCEAN.* 



By G. Bouchon-Brandely, 

 Secretary of the College of France. 



Monsieur the Minister: You did me the honor to charge me with 

 the mission of ascertaining the condition of oyster culture upon the 

 the coast of the English Channel and the ocean. 



I return from this mission with the profound conviction that this new 

 industry, so peculiarly French, has, after some unsuccessful attempts 

 in the beginning, arising from the novelty of the enterprise, entered 

 upon a stage of development and progress so well defined that we dare 

 affirm nothing can arrest it. 



The ever-increasing demands of consumption, stimulated by the prompt- 

 ness and facility of traffic and the more general diffusion of wealth, have 

 engaged jjublic attention for more than thirty years. 



Agriculture was first to make the effort to supply these increasing 

 necessities, but the ever-recurring demands for a sufficient food supply 

 not permitting any of our natural resources to be neglected, the rivers 

 and the seas have been placed under tribute and constrained to furnish 

 their share. In a few years our coasts and our water courses were ex- 

 hausted. Then arose, as an economical question of the first rank, the 

 necessity of repeopling the waters and placing the fisheries {domaine de 

 lapeche) under regular conditions of production. 



Such was the origin and raison d^etre of pisciculture and oyster-cul- 

 ture, two industries which have been created in our own time. 



Previously, in 1872 and 1873, M. the Minister of Public Instruction 

 had confided to me the double mission of studying fiuvial pisciculture 

 in France and abroad. I had occasion to recognize and to note with 

 regret that while in many neighboring states the main rivers and their 

 tributaries were being successfully restocked with fish, in France, where 

 pisciculture originated and where it had its firist scientific laboratory, 

 and where the six hundred water-courses which furrow its surface af- 

 ford a working field of not less than 000,000 hectares, it was not an 

 object of regular or general pursuit. To-day we may, with some pride, 



* Bapport all Ministre de la Marine relatif a V ostreiculture sur le littoral de la Manche 

 et de rOcean, par M. Bouchon-Brandely, Secretaire du College de France. Extrait du Jour- 

 nal Officiel dea 22, 24, 25 et 26 Janvier 1877. Paris, Librairie des publications legislatives. 

 A. Wittersheim et C«, Quai Voltaire, 31, 1877.— Translated by Marshall McDonald. 

 S. Mis. 46 43 ^^^ 



