862 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [38] 
beds of Cancale and Granville will be renewed and extended to a great 
many neighboring localities whose suitable bottoms will readily respond 
to the attempts which are made to enrich them. The basin of Arcachon, 
all that portion of the shores of the British Channel which extends from 
Dieppe to Havre, from Havre to Cherbourg, from Cherbourg to Gran- 
ville, will be covered with oysters, and the extinct beds in the neighbor- 
hood of La Rochelle, Oléron, Rochefort, Marennes, &c., will be restored to 
their former prosperity. But here, more than elsewhere, it will be nee- 
essary for the government to continue the work of restocking and di- 
vision, which it fortunately has already begun: that of cleansing, by 
repeated dredgings, these productive bottoms from the mussels and 
mud which completely cover them. 
This work accomplished, there is no reason why these ruined localities 
may not witness a return of their early prosperity and an increase of their 
wealth. The exploration which has enabled me to ascertain the state of 
suffering, of poverty, and of complete ruin in which most of the beds 
along the coast are now to be found, also demonstrated to me the fact 
that the depopulated depths had lost none of their fitness for reproduc- 
tion. The abuses by excessive fishing, aggravated by the want of care, 
have alone completed the destruction. Careful culture will soon repair 
the harm done in the past, and properly taken in charge, fields hitherto 
sterile will create, by a kind of submarine cultivation, new sources of 
abundance. But to create new sources of wealth is not sufficient; it is 
necessary, in order to perpetuate them, to define also the method of their 
cultivation, and to fix the time of year when it will be best to gather the 
crop. 
The experience of more than a century has already, in the bays of 
Cancale and Granville, given a solution of the first part of this impor- 
tant problem; regular periods of harvesting are the only means of ob- 
taining from the beds the greatest yield without destroying their fertility. 
The same general methods should be henceforth applied to the cultiva- 
tion of oyster beds; they should be divided into zones, so as not to re- 
turn to any one of them for two or three years, according as the bottoms 
are more or less suitable for the rapid maturing of the crop; but always 
taking care to leave a sufficiently large number of adults, so that the spat 
which they spread during the periods of repose may create new and sufii- 
cient harvests. By the general application of this method, the supply- 
ing of our markets and the fertility of the beds will be assured. 
There is, however, no rule so general, especially when applied to the 
reproduction of living creatures, subject to all the vicissitudes of the 
external world, that it may not have exceptions. There may exist un- 
known causes which will delay for a longer or shorter time the genera- 
tive function of the oysters of one locality or destroy their spat, and, in 
this case, the beds found to be affected ought to be kept in reserve until 
it is certain that they have resumed the regular exercise of their func- 
