258 " OYSTER-FARMS " IN ITALY. 



From the artificial oyster-beds which this ingenious and 

 refined gentleman laid down at Baise, he derived a con- 

 siderable revenue. He had his enemies, however, and 

 was brought to trial on a charge of having appropriated 

 . the public waters of the Lucrine Lake to his own private 

 behoof. He obtained an acquittal ; and we are told that 

 his advocate, L. Cassius, in the course of his pleading, 

 observed, that the revenue officers who had interfered 

 with his client were greatly mistaken if they thought he 

 would be deprived of his cherished molluscs, when driven 

 from the Lacus Lucrinus ; rather than endure such a loss, 

 his client would breed them on the roofs of his houses ! 



We wish he had essayed the experiment, and succeeded 

 in it ; for then, perhaps, every householder might now be 

 growing his own stock of oysters for private consump- 

 tion. 



One of the earliest seats of oyster-culture is Lake 

 Fusaro, in the south of Italy ; it is the Avernus, the lake 

 of gloom and desolation, which Virgil has described in 

 such exaggerated language. It is a black-looking sheet 

 of water, occupying the crater of an extinct volcano, the 

 steep and rugged sides of which, rising precipitously around 

 it, invest it with a strikingly sombre character. It was 

 probably this circumstance, associated with the sulphur- 

 eous and mephitic odours which pervade the neighbour- 

 hood, that induced the Greeks to conceive of it as the 

 entrance to the infernal regions and the scene of the visit 

 of Odysseus to the lower world. It measures about three 

 miles in circumference, and is situated between the 

 Lucrine Lake and the ruins of the ancient city of Cuma3. 

 A canal, from eight to ten feet in breadth, and four to five 



