Oyster Culture in Europe and Japan 73 



ficial propagation. Wheat, corn, and many other do- 

 mesticated food plants, do not even exist in a wild state. 

 Under domestication there is almost no limit but land 

 area to the possibilities of their increase. The world's 

 supply of beef, pork, and mutton, being under man's 

 control, is limited only by the amount of grain and hay 

 that he is able to raise for feed. Why should he not 

 also be able to control many of the animals of the sea, 

 that bears a vast supply of nourishment on which they 

 may thrive? 



France adopted a wise policy. Dredging was greatly 

 restricted, but investigations were begun in the hope that 

 the beds might be reclaimed by artificial means. As a 

 first step, M. de Bon, Commissioner of Marine, was di- 

 rected, in 1853, to attempt to restock the old beds of the 

 Ranee and Saint Malo. This he did by transplanting 

 oysters from the Bay of Cancale. He was an acute and 

 accurate observer, and able to detect the significance of 

 what he saw. The transplanted oysters not only flour- 

 ished, but some of them, placed on beaches where they 

 were exposed at low tide, were able to reproduce them- 

 selves as when continually immersed. It then occurred 

 to De Bon that if the young oysters, or " spat," could 

 be collected here and placed on favorable and con- 

 venient bottoms, the laborious process of dredging could 

 be done away with altogether, and that oysters could be 

 reared without the use of boats, and marketed at 

 pleasure. 



It was a great idea, and De Bon at once began to 

 devise some feasible means of capturing the swimming 

 oyster embryos. Constructing platforms of planks, 

 some inches above the parent oysters on the bottom, he 

 covered them with bundles of twigs, in the hope that the 



