BIVALVE MOLLUSCA. 



387 



superior flavour of the oysters of the I,ucrin Lake, the Avernus of the 

 poets, probably for trade reasons of his own, for then, as now, Reveille- 

 Parise remarks, writing on the subject, " tradesmen speculated on the 

 weaknesses of human gourmandism." But Sergius really created a 

 new industry, which is still practised in thousands of places much as 

 he left it. As a proof of the perfection to which Sergius had brought 

 oyster culture, his contemporaries said of him, in allusion to the 

 hanging banks which he invented, that if he had been prevented from 



Fig. 171. — Dredge employed in Oyster fisheries. 



raising oysters in the Lucrin Lake, " he would have made them grow 

 on the house tops." The traveller who visits this celebrated lake 

 finds now only a miry puddle. The precious oysters placed there by 

 Catiline's grandfather are replaced by a host of miserable eels, which 

 leap in the mud ; vile mountains of ashes, coal, and pumice-stone, 

 which were thrown up in one night like a mushroom, having reduced 

 the once celebrated lake into the state described. 



Rondeletius also speaks of a fisherman who understood the art of 

 oyster culture. 



The Neapolitan Lake Fusaro — the terrible Acheron 01 the poets — 

 is a great oyster-park, in which Art is made effectually to aid Nature 

 in the multiplication of its products. This famous oyster-bank, which 



z 2 



