OYSTERS. 379 



industry essentially necessary for the support of a maritime popula- 

 tion. 



The impulse given by this report has been productive of the most 

 satisfactory results in France. All along the coast the maritime popu- 

 lations are actively engaged in oyster culture. Oyster parks, in imita- 

 tion 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 per- 

 mit. The first serious attempt to carry out the views of the distin- 

 guished academician was 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 three millions of mother-oysters 

 which had been dredged in the common ground; brood from the 

 oyster grounds of Cancaie and Tre'quiers were distributed in ten 

 longitudinal lines on tiles, fragments of pottery, and valves of shells. 

 At the end of eight months the progress of the beds was tested, and 

 the dredge in a few minutes brought up two thousand oysters fit for 

 the table, while two fascines drawn up at random contained nearly 

 twenty thousand, from one to two inches in diameter. Two of these 

 fascines exposed to public view at Beni and Patrieux excited the 

 astonishment of the maritime population. 



This result encouraged M. Coste to pursue his experiments upon a 

 greater scale, and he now proposed to bring the whole littoral under a 

 regulated system of oyster culture. In the roads of Toulon and in 

 Lake Thau, which touches this port, the same system was put in 

 force by the Administration of Marine as had already been done in the 

 Bay of Arcachon and in the Isle of Ke. In these localities oyster 

 culture assumed gigantic proportions. Associations were formed for 

 the purpose of prosecuting them and forming oyster-parks. 



These exertions roused the curiosity of foreign nations. Van 

 Beneden, a distinguished naturalist of Louvain, and M. Eschrecht of 

 Copenhagen, visited France to study the arrangements for oyster cul- 

 ture. M. Coste demonstrated that parks could be established on all 

 places visited by the tide, and under his advice the Bay of Arcachon 

 is now transformed into a vast field of production, which increases 



