360 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [36] 
supervisory point of view or as a means of cultivation, it will render 
services which cannot be obtained by any other means. 
Iam willing, then, considering all things, to follow the example of 
the chief of the service of Saint-Servan. 
These launches would, in the navy, form a sort of agricultural marine, 
the employment of which would not exclude the use of vessels concerned 
in the general police of the fishing vessels which are employed in a 
greater development of the coast. They should be so constructed as to 
contain a well in which experiments could be made, or in which speei- 
mens could be transported alive from one point to another. 
Without doubt, when it is necessary to restore the prosperity of the 
affected beds by delivering them from a general invasion of mussels 
(moules), such as exists now at Marennes, or from the encroachment of 
the no less injurious maérle, as at certain points in the harbor of Brest, 
the tleet devoted to the ordinary service of the region will not suffice 
for the emergency; but, on such an occasion, the boats of the fishermen, 
for whose benefit the enterprise was established, could be pressed into 
service for the treatment of these beds, by the same rights which the 
proprietors of communes exercise when they undertake the repair of a 
public road. 
The young oysters and those taken in the open sea form two sources 
from which the government vessels may secure supplies for stocking 
the coast; but notwithstanding their abundant reproduction they would 
never be sufficient to accomplish this vast project unless means are em- 
ployed to prevent the loss of the myriads of embryo oysters, which, in 
the spawning season, leave the maternal valves as bees leave their hives; 
embryos which are nearly all lost in the natural state for the want of 
something to which they may attach themselves. 
To the care of this precious spat the attention of the agents of the gov- 
ernment should be henceforth directed. 
Each oyster produces not less than 2,000,000 of young. But, if out 
of this immense number a dozen succeed in attaching themselves to the 
parent shell it is all that can be hoped for, even in years of the greatest 
abundance. Those, then, that succeed in attaching themselves are as 
nothing in comparison with the immense numbers that are swept off by - 
the waves or which are lost in the mud, or which become the prey of 
polyps, which feed upon the animalcules suspended in the waters of the 
ocean. The problem to be solved, then, is how shall this inexhaustible 
seed supply be secured and carried to the grounds which are to be 
stocked ? 
In doing this, no notice need be paid to the natural beds formed 
from the young obtained at each spawning season, although even from 
them incalculable riches might be obtained. The only thing necessary 
is to fasten around the beds a species of wicker-work made with twigs 
and branches of trees with the bark on, imbedded in such a manner as 
not to interfere with navigation, and held to the bottom by heavy 
