186 THE SEA. 



and French coasts a most destructive process is employed ; a dredge-net, heavily weighted 

 with an iron frame, is thrown overboard; it tears off a number of the precious bivalves from 

 the bottom, and leaves a larger number buried in the mud. " In France/' says Figuier, 

 " oyster- dredging is conducted by fleets of thirty or forty boats, each carrying four or five 

 men. At a fixed hour, and under the surveillance of a coastguard in a pinnace bearing the 

 national flag, the flotilla commences the fishing. In the estuary of the Thames the practice 

 is much the same, although no official surveillance is observed. Each bark is provided with 

 four or five dredges, each resembling in shape a common clasp purse. These dredges are 

 formed of network, with a strong iron frame, the iron frame serving the double purpose of 

 acting as a scraper and keeping the mouth open, while giving a proper pressure as it travels 

 over the oyster-beds. . . . The tension of the rope is the signal for hauling in, and 

 very heterogeneous are the contents of the dredge seaweeds, star-fishes, lobsters, crabs, 

 actinia, and stones. In this manner the common oyster-beds on both sides of the Channel 

 were ploughed up by the oyster-dredger pretty much as the ploughman on shore turns up 

 a field." The consequence was that the fields became nearly exhausted. This led to the 

 scientific cultivation now in vogue, which has proved most thoroughly successful in a 

 commercial point of view. 



In Italy, the Neapolitan Lake Fusaro the Acheron of so many of the classical poets 

 is a great oyster- park, dating from the days of the Romans. It is a salt, marshy pond, 

 shaded by magnificent trees ; its greatest depth is nowhere more than six feet ; its bottom 

 is black, the mud being of volcanic origin. The general idea involved in the oyster cultivation 

 there is the protection of the embryo oyster. The fishermen of Lake Fusaro warehouse, as 

 it were, in protected spots, the oysters ready to discharge the spawn or spat. Upon 

 the bottom of the lake, and all around it, there are round pyramidal heaps of stones and 

 artificial rockeries, surrounded, by piles. Other piles have lines suspended from one to the 

 other, each cord bearing a faggot or faggots of young branches and twigs. In the spawn- 

 ing season the young fry, issuing from the parents on the stones or rocks, are arrested 

 by these means. They have, as it were, a resting-place provided for them on the piles and 

 faggots. 



The system pursued in France is that introduced by M. Coste, and founded on his study 

 of the Fusaro park. In 1858 he reported to the Emperor that of twenty-three oyster-beds 

 which had once existed at Rochelle, Marennes, Rochefort, the Isles of Re and Oleron, only 

 five were left, and that at other places formerly famed for oysters a similar mournful state- 

 ment must be made. " The impulse given by this report has been productive of the most 

 satisfactory results in France. All along the coast the maritime populations are now actively 

 engaged in oyster culture. Oyster-parks, in imitation of those at Fusaro, have sprung up. 

 In his appeal to the Emperor, M. Coste suggested that the State, through the Administration 

 of Marine, and by means of the vessels at its command, should take steps for sowing the 

 whole French coast in such a manner as to re-establish the oyster-banks now in ruins, extend 

 those which were prosperous, and create others anew wherever the nature of the bottom would 

 permit. The first serious attempt to carry out the views of the distinguished Academician 

 were made in the Bay of St. Brieuc. In the month of April in the same year in which his 

 report was received operations commenced by planting 3,000,000 mother- oysters which had 



