THE OYSTER FISHERIES. 57 



wise legislative restriction and encouragement, will have so far 

 exceeded it that, in addition to the supply to repletion of the 

 most extravagant demand for home need, the estahlishment 

 of a large export trade will be possible. 



Now, these expectations have reference only to tlic oyster 

 deposits in the coastal rivers and inlets ; while in addition to 

 these there are assumed to exist in the deep sea itself beds 

 which have not even been searched for, and which conse- 

 quently have not suffered spoliation at the hands of man. The 

 evidence of the existence of such beds seems indisputable. On 

 portions of the coast quite remote from inlet of any kind are to 

 be found immature oysters in quantity cultched to the rocks. 

 These must have their origin somewhere in the ocean depths. 

 Of course they do not thrive on these wave-beaten rocks. 

 They simply exist ; the salinity of the water and the turbulence 

 of the sea are not conditions favourable to their development. 

 The same may be said of the oysters literally plastered some- 

 times a foot or more in thickness on the rocks just inside 

 harbours and inlets, such, for instance, as Port Hacking. 

 They ever remain diminutive, and worthless as an article 

 for consumption. As has already been advanced in respect to 

 the occurrence of oyster-beds in rivers and inlets, so in the 

 deep sea also, there must be places where the fresh water oozes 

 up from under the ocean floor, and meeting suitable bottom 

 produces the food and other conditions necessary to oyster 

 growth and development. Else, if it were not so, how is the 

 presence of oysters in lake channels to be accounted for? 

 Instance, for example, Lake Macquarie or Lake Illawarra. In 

 neither of those Avaters are oysters to be found, and oysters 

 placed therein for experiment have died. Surely, the reason 

 they died was because, as a converse to the position taken in 

 regard to sea water, these lake waters had not a sufficient 

 salinity to sustain oyster life. Therefore, if oysters occurring, 

 as they do occur, in these lake channels, are not the produce 

 of oysters in the lakes themselves, and if oysters are found 

 on the sea rocks in places quite remote from rivers or inlets 

 of any kind, where can they have had their origin if not 

 from the floor of the deep sea itself ? 



Lakes Macquarie and Illawarra have been instanced, in 

 support of this contention, as being waters the conditions of 

 which are more generally known ; l)ut the same argument 

 will apply to every coastal inlet. Off the Clarence Hiver 

 Heads an oyster-bed was once discovered, but its position has 



