702 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [20] 
6—ATTEMPIS TO INTRODUCE THE FRENCH SYSTEM OF 
ARTIFICIAL OYSTER-BREEDING INTO GREAT BRITAIN. 
In Great Britain a large number of men are employed in oyster-dredg | 
ing and in the oyster-trade, and, according to the published official esti- 
mate for the year 1870, the yearly value of oysters sold in the kingdom 
is not far from £4,000,00) sterling. If we take the average price of 
oysters as one penny (two cents) apiece, which is rather too much than 
too little, this amount would account for 960,060,( 00 of oysters. 
In the year 1864 there were brought to the London market alone 
more than 495,000,000 of oysters, which were worth over £2,000,000 
sterling. The culture of oysters being thus of so much importance to 
Great Britain, it was very natural that attempts at artificial oyster- 
breeding in France should be watched with intense interest, and imitated 
at various points along the Brifish coast. It was carried on most ex- 
tensively upon the coast of the smallisland of Hayling, east from Ports- 
mouth, by the South of England Oyster Company, organized in 1865 
with a capital of £50,000. Inside of a dike upon the west side of the 
island five oyster-beds were prepared, having an extent of sea-bottom 
of about 32 hectares (about 80 acres). May 11 and 12, 1869, when I 
visited these beds, several of them had not been overflowed. The nat- 
ural bottom, which was a sticky mud, had been covered with gravel and 
mussel-shells, and upon the largest bed hurdles, each 2.4 meters long by 
75 centimeters broad, and composed of birch twigs, had been placed so 
as to rest horizontally at about one-half a meter above the ground. 
Besides these hurdles, laths, with oyster-shells and bundles of small rods 
nailed to them, were stuck about over the ground, so that there should 
be plenty of objects of attachment for the young oysters. The inward 
and outward flow of the water was regulated by means of a sluice and 
gate. The mother oysters are generally placed in the beds just before 
the breeding season. 
In 1869 they expected to place upon the beds 50,000 breeding oysters. 
The water is generally changed every day, except during the winter 
months, when there would be danger of freezing the oysters, and also 
except during the swarming period, when the young would be liable to 
escape into the sea with the changing water. In 1867, 00,000 mature 
deep-sea oysters were placed on an oyster-bed which covered a surface 
of 7.3 hectares, and over which 10,000 hurdles were placed as objects of 
attachment. Upon an average over 12,000 young oysters were found 
attached to each hurdle, making for all the hurdles a total of more than 
120,009,000. In these and other experiments at artificial oyster-breed- 
ing in England all the experiences of French oyster- breeders were 
made use of as far as possible, but, notwithstanding this, at no single 
breeding station were the expectations of a great yield of marketable 
oysters ever realized. In London, on the 4th of May, 1876, Mr. Blake, 
, the inspector of fisheries, made, before the commission for the investi- 
