[57] OYSTER CULTURE. 809° 
the young growth necessary to restock the claires left vacant by the 
preceding generation, have recourse, as at first, to the movable collec- 
tors and bring the young from some natural bank; but as soon as a gener- 
ation of oysters becomes adult, and consequently capable of reproducing 
the species, the claires themselves ought to produce all the young neces- 
sary to furnish the ponds with a constant supply of animals. To accom- 
plish this, about one mouth before the spawning season collectors are 
disposed in those claires containing the adult oysters, it having first 
been ascertaimed that these oysters are nearly ripe. The collectors are 
chosen at the convenience of the breeder, according to the means and 
resources of the country where the claires are situated, and become 
charged with young just the same as over the natural beds at sea, since 
before being taken from the ponds for market the adult oysters leave 
there a numerous progeny to replace themselves; as the germs produced 
are always vastly more numerous than the oysters which produced them, 
if the breeder does not desire to extend his industry and increase the 
number of ponds, collectors need be placed only in one or more of the 
ponds containing adults, so that the demands of commerce can always be 
satisfied during the five or six months required to charge the collectors. 
Experience proves the efficacy of this process. Many times, despite the 
defective condition of their claires, the breeders of Marennes have wit- 
nessed their basins, depleted by a wide-spread mortality, unexpectedly 
repeopled from a few oysters which had survived the disaster, the young 
developing upon the shells of the dead oysters; the shells in these cases 
acted as collectors to retain the germs which otherwise would have per- 
ished or been carried off by the first spring-tide. 
It is.perhaps to be wondered at, and even regretted, that such facts 
should not have caused the breeders to see the immense advantage- 
of making their basins places of production and growth, as well as fat- 
tening establishments. To-day, thanks to the light thrown upon this 
question by the researches of M. Coste, the oyster industry can be raised 
above the condition in which it has been kept up to the present time, by 
routine and indifference, and spread along our coasts, which have been 
threatened with misery and depopulation; the consequences will be an 
eminently remunerative industry and a permanent source of labor, which 
will attract to our coasts numerous and robust men, the future hopes of 
our navaland commercial marine. A few figures, not chosen by chance, 
but selected as a possible minimum, may serve to prove to my readers 
that I have not exaggerated in qualifying the new industry as highly 
remunerative, especially when it is called to mind that the lands upon 
which this industry is carried on are nearly valueless and unsuited to 
any other sort of cultivation. 
The price of a hundred oysters of the Marennes variety varies from 
14 to 6 franes.. Let us then adopt the price of 3 francs, which is less 
than a mean, as the average price per hundred. Upon a square meter 
of surface in a claire we can raise from 60 to 80 oysters, and if we take 
