[5] OYSTER-CULTURE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 911 
duce deep down in the water. From time to time, as the mussels 
increase in size, the reproducers are changed for others which the 
fishermen get from the crop of each season. The cords used to gather 
the young mussels are made from rushes or “alfa”; each of their ex- 
tremities is fastened to a stake, and their length depends upon the depth 
at which they are to be immersed, it being required that the tangent of 
the are which they describe should lie close above the bed containing 
the reproducing mussels. 
The mussel spawns in March or early in April, and reproduces so 
rapidly that the cords used as collectors soon become loaded with young 
ones. The collectors are allowed to remain down six months before 
they are taken up to make a selection, the object of which is to remove 
the mussels when they attain the size of asmallalmond. Those selected 
are then interlaced, either in bunches or singly, with the strands of the 
ropes, and these ropes are fastened to others stretched horizontally be- 
tween stakes placed at suitable distances apart, so as to fall vertically 
into the water. 
In selecting the mussels from the collectors, those which have not yet 
attained the required size are allowed to remain, and the collectors are 
thrown back into the water. The following season these will have 
grown large enough to serve as food. The rearing places are in deep 
water; parks even are utilized which extend eight or nine hundred 
meters (2,600 or 2,925 feet) into the sea; the cords bearing the mussels 
are also sometimes nearly forty palmes (about 30 feet) long; so that, at 
least as regards Tarente, breeding may be well accomplished in shallow 
water, while the rearing should be carried on where the depth is greater. 
The little sea of Tarente produces two kinds of mussels, the common 
mussel and the red mussel (Modiola barbata). The latter is preferred, 
_ and is much more valuable. The red mussel and the white mussel mul- 
tiply and abound in nearly equal proportions; nevertheless it would 
seem that the white mussel is endowed with greater fecundity, and can 
be kept fresh, out of water, for a longer time. A park will furnish, on an 
average, from four to five hundred quintals of mussels every year, the 
wholesale price of which is 11 francs ($2.20) per quintal. 
OYSTER-CULTURE. 
The arrangement of oyster parks is like that of the parks for mussels, 
with this difference, that they do not generally extend quite so far into 
the sea. Beyond certain depths oyster culture presents great difficulties 
and entails great expense. ‘These parks are divided by stakes into equal 
squares of fourteen palmes (12 feet) on each side. They are entirely de- 
voted to the raising of oysters. Breeding cannot succeed there on ac- 
count of the large quantity of mud brought down by the current into 
the lower part of the Little Sea. Nevertheless, the adult oysters accom- 
plish their generative functions there; but the young ones, on leaving 
the mother oyster, do not find collectors suitable to receive them and fall 
