354 PROGRESS OF OYSTER-CULTURE. [CHAP. vm. 



tional five hundred beds were speedily laid down, and in 1860 

 large quantities of brood were sold to the oyster-farmers at 

 Marennes, for the purpose of being manufactured into green 

 oysters in their claires on the banks of the river Seudre. The 

 first sales after cultivation had become general amounted to 

 126, and the next season the sum reached in sales was up- 

 wards of 500, and these moneys, be it observed, were for 

 very young oysters ; because, from an examination of the 

 dates, it will at once be seen that the brood had not had time 

 to grow to any great size. So rapid indeed has been the pro- 

 gress of oyster-culture at the He de Ee that what were formerly 

 a series of enormous and unproductive mud-banks, occupying 

 a stretch of shore about four leagues in length, are now so trans- 

 formed, and the whole place so changed, that it seems the work 

 of a miracle. Various gentlemen who have inspected these 

 farms for the cultivation of oysters speak with great hopeful- 

 ness about the success of the experiment. Mr. Ashworth, so 

 well known for his success as a salmon fisher and breeder in 

 Ireland, tells me that oyster-farming on the shores of the French 

 coast is one of the greatest industrial facts of the present age, 

 and thinks that oyster-farming will in the end be even more 

 profitable than salmon-breeding. There is only one drawback 

 connected with these and all other sea- farms in France : the 

 farmers, we regret to say, are only "tenants at will,"* and 

 liable at any moment to be ejected ; but notwithstanding this 

 disadvantage the work of oyster-culture still goes bravely for- 

 ward, and it is calculated, in spite of the bad spatting of the 

 last three years, that there is a stock of oysters in the beds on 



* Mr. Ashworth, in a communication to Mr. Barry, one of the Com- 

 missioners of Irish Fisheries, says : " No charge is made for the oyster- 

 parks, but each plot is marked and defined on a map, and the produce 

 is considered to be the private property of the person who establishes it. 

 They vary in size twenty or thirty yards square, the stone or tiles are 

 placed in rows about five feet apart, with the ends open so as to admit 

 of the wash of the tide in and out." 



