Peale CONDITION OF OYSTER CULTURE IN 1875. 889 
oyster at the time of spawning. Some details of natural history will 
here be necessary. 
Spawning of the oyster.—The oyster is hermaphrodite;* that is to say, 
each individual possesses the attributes of both sexes, fecundates itself, 
and produces yeung. The spawning usually takes place from June to 
the end of September; but the eggs are not immediately expelled; they 
remain until batched within the mantle folds of the parent oyster, en- 
veloped in a mucous substance essential to their development. When 
the proper time arrives the young sally forth, being furnished with a 
temporary swimming apparatus, which enables them to go in search of 
a suitable point of attachment. The swarms of embryos are innumer- 
able, each parent giving birth to not less than one or two millions of 
young at each spawning. ‘At the time when all the adult individuals 
composing a bed void their progeny, this living dust issues like a thick 
cloud, which, leaving the point where it originated, is dispersed by the 
action of the water, only an imperceptible portion remaining attached 
to the parent stock. The rest is all scattered, and if the multitudes 
carried here and there by the waves do not find something solid to 
which they can attach themselves they are certain to be destroyed, for 
those that do not become the prey of other forms of life finally settle 
upon a locality unsuited to their development, and are often swallowed 
up in the mud.” 
Recent origin of oyster culture—The idea of forming special establish- 
ments for the purpose of retaining and preserving some of those in- 
numerable germs is a recent one, or, at least, only a few years have 
elapsed since it passed from the domain of theory to that of fact. The 
only oyster cultural practices known of somewhat ancient date are those 
seen by M. Coste in the parks of Lake Fusaro, to which we have 
already referred. The keepers of these parks had, from time immemorial, 
been in the habit of collecting the spat upon stakes driven around their 
deposits, and upon bundles of fagots suspended from ropes stretched 
above the water. But this industry was an entirely local one; it had 
not extended to the other districts of Italy, not even to the adjacent 
ones, and it was not at all commonly known. 
First attempts made at Saint-Servan.—It was in France, some twenty 
years ago, that oyster culture really had its origin. About the time M. 
Coste visited Lake Fusaro, in 1853, M. De Bon, then commissioner of 
marine and chief of the service at Saint-Servan, now director of adminis- 
trative affairs in the ministry of marine, was directed by the minister 
to attempt the restocking of the old oyster-beds of the Rance and of 
the roadstead of Saint-Malo, by means of shell-fish obtained from 
the beds in the bay of Cancale. In observing the results of these ex- 
periments, which sueceeded perfectly well, he became convinced of a 
fact which had, until then, been contested, viz.: that the oyster can re- 
produce itself even after having been transplanted to bottoms which are 
*Coste: Voyage d’éxploration, &c. 
