238 OVERFISHING OF THE OYSTER. 



various boughs besides were hung over the beds on ropes and 

 chains, whilst others were sunk in the water and kept down 

 by a weight. A few boat-loads of oysters being laid down, 

 the spat had no distance to travel in search of a home, but 

 found a resting-place almost at the moment of being exuded ; 

 and, as the fairy legends say, " it grew and it grew," till, in the 

 fulness of time, it became a marketable commodity. 



But the history of this modern phase of oyster-farming, as 

 practised on the foreshores of France, is so interesting as to 

 demand at my hands a rather detailed notice, for it is one of 

 the most noteworthy circumstances connected with the revived 

 art of fish-culture, that it has resulted in placing upon the shores 

 of France a countless number of fish-farms for the cultivation 

 of the oyster alone. 



It is no exaggeration to say, that about twenty-five years 

 ago there was scarcely an oyster of native growth in France ; 

 the beds — and I cite the case of France as a warning to people 

 at home, I mean as regards our Scottish oyster-bedS' — ^had be- 

 come so exhausted from overdredging as to be unproductive, so 

 far as their money value was concerned, and to be totally 

 unable to recover themselves so far as their power of repro- 

 ductiveness was at stake. And the people were consequently 

 in despair at the loss of this favourite adjunct of their banquets, 

 and had to resort to other countries for such small supplies as 

 they could obtain. As an illustration of the overdredging that 

 had prevailed, it may be stated that oyster-farms which formerly 

 employed 1400 men, with 200 boats, and yielded an annual 

 revenue of 400,000 francs, had become so reduced as to require 

 only 100 men and 20 boats. Places where at one time there 

 had been as many as fifteen oyster-banks, and great prosperity 

 among the fisher class, had become, at the period I allude to, 

 almost oysterless. St. Brieuc, Eochelle, Marennes, Eochefort, 

 etc., had all suffered so much that those interested in the 

 fisheries were no longer able to stock the beds, thus proving 

 that, notwithstanding the great fecundity of these sea animals, 

 it is quite possible to overfish them, and thoroughly exhaust 

 their reproductive power. It was under these circumstances 

 that M. Coste instituted that plan of oyster-culture which has 

 been so much noticed of late in the scientific journals, and 

 which appears to have been inspired by the plan of the mussel- 

 farms in the Bay of Aiguillon, and the oyster-pares of Lake 

 Fusaro, so far at least as the principle of cultivation is 



