72 MARCH. 



A yard or two below the surface the eye is caught by 

 a great oyster projecting from the vertical wall. It is 

 a strange situation for an oyster to be in, but it shows 

 how the infant young, in their free- swimming form, so 

 different from their ultimate condition, may be carried 

 by the aid of their own cilia, and the sea-currents, into 

 the most improbable situations, and may there find cir- 

 cumstances congenial for permanent settlement. 1 Per- 

 haps, however, its brown and rough shell would scarcely 

 have attracted our notice, but for the rider that sits 



i M. Coste has lately communicated a paper to the Academy of Sciences 

 on the progress of his artificial oyster-beds on the western coast of France. 

 Several thousands of the inhabitants of the island of Re have been for the 

 last four years engaged in cleansing their muddy coast of the sediments 

 which prevented oysters from congregating there ; and as the work advances 

 the seed wafted over from Nieulle and other oyster localities settles in the 

 new beds, and, added to that transplanted, peoples the coast, so that 

 72,000,000 of oysters, from one to four years old, and nearly all marketable, 

 is the lowest average per annum registered by the local administration, 

 representing, at the rate of from 25 to 30 francs per thousand, which is the 

 current price in the locality, a sum of about two millions of francs, the 

 produce of an extremely limited surface. That the waves or currents 

 carry the seed of oysters is a well-known fact, since the walls of sluices 

 newly erected are often covered with them. In the island of Re, the exist- 

 ence of the oyster-beds, however, no longer depends upon this contingency, 

 they being now in a state of permanent self-reproduction. The distinction 

 of oyster-beds into those of collection and those of reproduction is quite 

 unnecessary, since the property of reproduction belongs to them all. In 

 some localities it is siiflicient to prepare the emerging banks for collection 

 to see them soon covered with seed ; but in other places nothing would be 

 obtained without transplanting proper subjects, an operation which by no 

 means impairs their reproductive qualities. The concession of emerging 

 banks is anxiously applied for by the inhabitants of the coast ; the more so 

 as improvements in the working of this branch of trade are of daily occur- 



