116 NEW SOUTH WALES 
Lake Fusaro is highly interesting as being the first seat of oyster 
culture. It is the Avernus of Virgil. It is still devoted to the highly 
profitable art of oyster-farming. The mode of oyster-breeding at this 
place is now, as it was eighteen centuries ago, to erect artificial pyramids 
of stones in the water, surrounded by stakes of wood, in order to inter- 
cept the spawn. Fagots of branches were also used to collect the spawn, 
which must find a holding-on place within forty-eight hours after its 
emission, or it will be lost for ever. 
The Royal Commission (Ireland) say :—Hurdles and fascines have 
been found to answer well as collectors, and they will be found cheaper. 
They are fixed in rows, by means of pegs, about 2 or 3 feet above the 
oysters, which are scattered on the soil under them. : 
Furze bushes are also found to answer fairly, but fascines and 
bushes are scarcely so suitable in a tide-way, in consequence of the 
liability of the twigs to catch weed, break, and float away, when the 
spat is carried with them. In all cases when wood is employed for 
collectors, it should be dry, hard, and sapless, and cut, at least, in the 
preceding season. Oysters are more easily detached from wood col- 
lectors ; the loss or damage to the shell breaking them off is least upon 
fascines, as the twigs are easily broken off; the loss is greater on 
hurdles, greater still on tiles, and greatest of all on stones. The young 
oyster, though somewhat malformed at times on twigs, soon regains its 
shape when detached without damage. Tiles are largely used in France 
because they are cheap—about £2 per thousand. One cultivator, at 
Auray, possesses 200,000 tiles, and on these he obtained, in 1869, six 
millions of oysters. 
In New South Wales the production of oysters is immensely beyond 
our present requirements, and nature has also provided us so amply 
with holding-on places (rocks, mangrove trees, &c.) for collecting the 
spat, that it appears almost superfluous for us to allude to the subject of 
oyster-breeding ; but this state of things may not always continue, and 
at some future time information on breeding oysters will be as useful as 
that on the growth and fattening of oysters is at the present time. 
As respects the fattening of oysters.—The nature of the bed or soil 
on which it rests is a matter of the greatest importance. Bertram says 
the beds of ‘natives’ are all situated on the London clay or on similar 
formations. * * * The portion of the beds set apart for the rear- 
ing of ‘natives’ is as sacred as the waxen cells devoted to the growth 
of queen bees. But, although called ‘natives,’ in many instances they 
are not ‘natives’ at all, but are, on the contrary, a grand mixture of all 
kinds of oysters, being brought from Prestonpans and Newhaven, in 
the Firth of Forth, and from many other places, to augment the stock. 
Many circumstances highly favourable to the growth and fattening of 
oysters are the reverse for successful breeding. Growth and fattening 
will proceed where there may be a large amount of fresh water and a 
strong current : the former would prove prejudicial to spatting, and the 
latter tend to prevent the adhesion of spat—at least in the locality at which 
it is voided. It is a remarkable fact that there are no fine-flavoured’ 
oysters where there is not fresh water, and this fact was noticed by 
Pliny more than eighteen hundred years ago. The Royal Commission 
(Ireland) says: For fattening there are few places better than a salt 
