842 | REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [18] 
that the molecules of mud cannot encroach upon them nor cover them, , 
solid bodies upon which they may fix themselves. If in supplying these 
points of support we should follow the example of what is done in Lake 
Fusaro, and use stakes, it will be necessary to plant them vertically, 
either at the bottom of the claire, or to fasten them to floating rafts, 
which would hold them suspended without the necessity of occupying a 
portion of the soil upon which the reproducing animals repose. ‘These 
rafts would have another advantage: they could carry movable planks, 
placed obliquely side by side like the slats of blinds, in such a manner 
as to have one side always preserved from contact with, and from the 
deposit of, the mud. These movable pieces, when covered with seed, 
could be disconnected and suspended vertically from the frame of the 
raft; we would thus imitate the process long since adopted in one of the 
basins of the arsenal of Venice, by the keeper, who raised mussels there 
artificially. But there are details of operation which experience will 
teach us how to vary in practice. The following extract leaves no doubt 
as to the success of the enterprise. 
In 1820 a salt-maker of Marenne, having parked 6,000 oysters in one 
of the claires, an intense cold killed them all with the exception of a 
dozen, which survived this disaster. But when the reservoir was 
~ emptied in order to cleanse it, instead of finding the soil nearly deserted, 
it was an agreeable surprise to discover upon the shells of all the dead 
oysters young of considerable size, which restocked the whole reser- 
voir.* The presence of these shells was sufficient to enable the new 
generation to fix themselves, and prosper there. Art must then only 
imitate the example which nature offered in this curious circumstance, 
and it will not be necessary to borrow from more or less distant countries 
the material for restocking (renouvelain), which is now obtained at great 
expense. 
When we have adopted this mode of cultivation, it will be important 
to find out if, instead of maintaining the dikes in reproductive claires 
low enough for the great spring-tides to submerge them, it would not be 
better to raise them above the level of the highest sea, in order to pre- 
vent the receding waves from washing away a part of the seed. At the 
eve of each great spring-tide the water of these reservoirs, emptied 
almost entirely by careful workmen, who leave only a necessary quan- 
tity to protect the oysters from injury, will be replaced the next day, 
so that all the conditions favorable to development will be found com- 
bined in the same degree as in the ordinary claires. These would be 
true nurseries from whence could be drawn all the elements of a new 
prosperity, since they would furnish the live-ponds with abundant seed 
easy to obtain. 4 
With the help and consent of the administration of marine, an abund- 
*Essay upon the green oysters of Marennes, M. G. de la B., president of the Tribunal 
of Marennes; Rochefort, 1821. (‘‘ Dissertation sur les huitres vertes de Marenncs, par M- 
G. de la B., président du tribunal de Marennes; Rochefort, 1821.”) 
