178 APPENDIX TO REPORT ON OYSTER CULTURE 



" 58,617. Do you agree with Mr. Nichols, that if the spat were left on the flats it 

 would never arrive at maturity, but would be strangled by the five-fingers ? — Yes, I am 

 very strongly of that opinion, and we have had it proved. 



" 58,618. What ground have you for thinking so? — That has been the case when any 

 of the spat has been left there. In 1860, when we had our last spat, some portion of it 

 was left there in the winter time, when we could not go to work upon it, because if we 

 had taken it away and laid it upon our grounds it would have been killed by the frost ; 

 we therefore left it lying upon the flats, and when we went for the purpose of taking it in 

 the spring of the year following, we found that it had all been destroyed by five-fingers. 



"58,619. Did you upon that occasion find many five-fingers upon the ground? — Yes, 

 they came in like swarms of bees, completely filling the ground in a day. I never saw 

 anything like it ; we saw all the water filled with them, 



" 61,561. I should like now, with your permission, to say a few words with regard to 

 the necessity of maintaining a close-season. I think there can be no question of this, 

 that if the close-season were enforced upon the Whitstable ground it would ruin the fishery 

 altogether. There is no question at all about that. 1 quite agree with what Mr. Smith 

 said, namely, that the ground upon which freshets are constantly coming and bringing 

 sullage with them require to be continuously cleaned. Then again a heavy gale of wind 

 will come on, and roll up the oysters in a ridge three feet deep. Great injury would be done 

 to the oysters unless they were worked, and by working them in the course of a day or two 

 they would all be spread over again. When they are spread the mud all goes away, but if 

 they were left on that ridge the mud would settle all round them and kill them very 

 rapidly. In the next place, that ridge, if allowed to remain, would cause an eddy and a 

 fresh deposit of mud all round it for many yards. In the next place, it is just at that 

 time of year that we want to work on account of the five-fingers coining upon the beds. 

 They come like a flock of gulls, and unless they were well dredged they would soon 

 destroy the spat. There is one kind that will eat an oyster itself; yet it is a singular 

 thing with regard to them that after they have been dredged for a time they roll them- 

 selves up and float away. So much is that the case that in places where the fishermen 

 have caught ten bushels of five-fingers one day they will go out the next day and not 

 catch one. If during the close months the fishermen were unable to dredge, of course it 

 would follow that the five-fingers would soon clear the oysters off the beds. To show 

 the advantage of working the beds in the summer time, I may say that about four years 

 ago, some time after the great spat in 1858, the Whitstable Company, when the oysters 

 came, wanted more ground. There was a piece of ground about half a mile in extent 

 lying on the east side of the regular ground, which had not been worked by the company, 

 because they thought it was useless to work it. Well, they took it into their heads to work 

 upon it and clean it, and it was said last year by two of the jmy that since the time they 

 had cleaned it they had sold off that piece of ground alone more than 150,000 bushels of 

 oysters. Indeed that ground now is one of the best pieces of ground they have, and upon 

 that half mile they lay their brood." 



" It is impossible to study this evidence without being struck by the 

 great complexity of the conditions upon which the prosperity of an 

 oyster bed depends, even if we look at the action and interaction of 

 mussels and starfish alone, without considering any other of the numer- 

 ous active and passive enemies of the oyster. Nor is it possible to be 

 other than impressed by the necessity of extreme caution in concluding 

 that any observed increase or diminution in the supply of oysters has 

 arisen from any one cause. 



" The consideration of such facts as those here detailed leads us to attach 

 very great weight to the opinion expressed by many competent witnesses, 

 that the enforcement of a close-time in the open grounds is not only 

 unnecessary but may be positively injurious, by allowing the accumula- 

 tion of mud and weeds, and by permitting the five-fingers to commit 

 their ravages without check. At the same time it can hardly be 

 admitted that open-sea oyster beds must perish if not dredged, as some 

 of the witnesses maintained. How could the beds ever grow to a suffi- 

 cient size to be worth dredging if their very existence depended upon 

 their being dredged ? 



" In favour of the existing system of close-time it is urged : 



a. That during close-time the oysters are unfit for food. 



b. That dredging over the beds will crush and destroy the young 



spat. 



c. That if the oysters are taken while breeding the supply must soon 



come to an end. 



