102 THE OYSTER. 



beds had been so impoverished that they no longer 

 yielded enough oysters for planting. In another 

 locality, where thirteen valuable beds formerly fur- 

 nished employment for two hundred vessels and four- 

 teen hundred men for six months in each year, and 

 yielded an annual harvest valued at $60,000 to $80,000, 

 only three beds remained, and these were so depleted 

 that twenty boats could in a few days carry away all the 

 oysters. 



In 1863, during six tides, upon only one-half of an 

 area of 100 acres which had been restocked, he ob- 

 tainued 16,000,000 marketable oysters. 



Land was then ceded by the government to indi- 

 viduals, to be cultivated in the same way, and one area 

 of 492 acres was in a few years stocked with oysters 

 valued at $8,000,000. 



The government farms were never very successful, 

 but the industry has prospered and grown steadily 

 under private management, and the oyster-farmers, 

 taught by their own experience and by the results 

 attained by the government in experimental parks, be- 

 came more self-reliant; they improved their imple- 

 ments and their methods of work. It may be affirmed 

 that in the two principal centers in which it is now 

 carried on, the basins of Arcachon and Morbihan, this 

 industry then emerged from its period of uncertainty. 

 The great profits realized there during the past few 

 years have brought oyster culture again into favor, and 

 turned toward it a current of labor and capital much 



