IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND FRANCE. 175 



31. Tramore. — Mr. E. Power's oyster beds and tank at Kilmacleague. 

 Sample (No. 1, Beach Park) of the bottom of the first pare (park) or bed 

 formed by Edmund Power, esq., several years ago, out of the beach, as at 

 Isle Pe, for breeding on fascines. It failed as a breeding pare, though 

 oysters improve somewhat in it. 



Description. — Stiff yellow clay containing pebbles of the local Lower 

 Silurian grits, slates, felstones, greenstones, and limestones, and with 

 streaks of brownish manganiferous ferric hydrate through it, deposited 

 by the water as the specimen dried. Here and there the clay was light 

 coloured — the iron having been reduced from the state of ferric compounds 

 to ferrous, and dissolved out. When air and light were excluded the 

 interior of the moist mass blackened somewhat. The clay contained 

 very little organic matter however. 



32. Tramore. — Mr. E. Power's oyster beds and tank at Kilmacleague. 

 Sample (No. 2, Wark's Gap) of bottom of natural pond where there is a 

 large quantity of fresh water and consequently much mud. Oysters im- 

 prove more in this mud than on any other part of Mr. E. Power's licensed 

 grounds. He believes the oysters spawn, but that the spat is carried 

 away by currents and lost in the mud. 



Description. — Fine beach sand of quartz, felstone, and other local rocks, 

 intermixed with a small quantity of very fine silty mud, which blackened 

 when air and light were excluded from the moist mass. The mass also 

 contained Confervas in abundance, tubes of agglutinated sand formed by 

 Annelides (Hermellse), and comminuted periwinkles. 



33. Tramore. — Sample of soil from the bottom of one of the tanks 

 formed inside Mr. E. Power's embankment. The experiment with these 

 tanks failed. 



Description. — Coarse gravel of local rocks (slates, grits, vein quartz, 

 felstone, &c.) with a little intermixed sandy clay and fragments of shells. 

 The clay was not nocculent, and did not contain much organic matter. 

 It blackened, however, here and there when air and light were excluded 

 from the moist mass. 



From the preceding descriptions, as well as from the nature of the local 

 rocks in the neighbourhood of prolific natural oyster beds, it is evident 

 that oyster cultivation may thrive upon shores and sea bottoms formed 

 of granitoid rocks, schistose rocks, clay-slate, grits, shales, sandstones, 

 limestone, chalk, clays — in fact, of rocks of all kinds. Consequently so 

 far as the nature of the rock is concerned, oysters may be cultivated on 

 any part of the Irish coast. Again, that while the gravel, sand, and clay 

 of the sea-shore are, as a rule, formed from local rocks, in some places, as 

 along the coasts of Wexford and Wicklow, they are derived from drift 

 gravel, a good deal of which has been formed by the denudation of existing 

 local rocks, but part also from limestone and other rocks not now found 

 on the coast, or only here and there. In some places the sands and 

 gravels derived from local rocks may be so covered over by deposits of 

 coral sand or comminuted shells as to have no influence on the actual 

 soil of the oyster ground, as is the case on parts of the west coast of 

 Ireland (see descriptions of Nos. 16 and 17, p. 172). It further appears 

 that the soil of all places successful as fattening stations contains more 

 or less of a fine nocculent highly hydrated silty clay, abounding in vege- 

 table and animal matter derived chiefly from Diatomacea, Phizopoda, 

 and other microscopical organisms ; and that the soils of those places 

 which have proved successful as breeding stations always contain some of 

 it, but not necessarily as much as those which fatten ; and lastly, that 

 in those places which have proved failures, this peculiar kind of mud 

 is either wholly absent, or inferior in quality and quantity. 



