BIVALVE MOLLUSCA. 387 
superior flavour of the oysters of the Lucrin 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 thé-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 of the poets— 
is a great oyster-park, in which Art is made effectually to aid Nature 
in the multiplication of its products. This famous oystet-bank, which 
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