244 FOKMING THE FAEMS. 



stretch of shore about four leagues in length, are now so trans- 

 formed, and the whole place so changed, that it seems the work 

 of a miracle. Various gentlemen who have inspected these farms 

 for the cultivation of oysters speak with great hopefulness about 

 the success of the experiment. Mr. Ashworth, so weU known 

 for his success as a salmon fisher and breeder in Ireland, tells 

 me that oyster-farming on the shores of the French coast is one 

 of the greatest industrial facts of the present age, and thinks 

 that oyster-farming will in the end be even more profitable than 

 salmon- breeding. There is only one drawback connected 

 with these and aU other sea^-farms in France : the farmers, we 

 regret to say, are only " tenants at wUl," * and liable at any 

 moment to be ejected ; but notwithstanding this disadvantage 

 the work of oyster-culture still goes bravely forward, and it is 

 calculated, in spite of the bad spattiog of the last three years, 

 that there is a stock of oysters in the beds on the lie de Ee— 

 accumulated in only six years — of the value of upwards of 

 ^100,000. 



Much hard work had no doubt to be endured before such a 

 scene of industry could be thoroughly organised. When the 

 great success of Bceuf s experiments had been proclaimed in the 

 neighbourhood, a little army of about a thousand labourers 

 came down fi-om the interior of the country and took possession, 

 along with the native fiishermen, of the shores, portions of 

 which were conceded to them by the French Government at 

 a nominal rent of about a franc a week, for the purpose of being 

 cultivated as oyster parks and claires. The most arduous duty 

 of these men consisted in clearing off the mud, which lay on 

 the shore in large quantities, and which is fatal to the oyster 

 in its early stages ; but this had to be done before the shores 

 could be turned to the purpose for which they were wished. 

 After this preliminary business had been accomplished, the 

 rocks had to be blasted in order to find stones for the construc- 

 tion of the park-walls ; then these had to be built, and the 

 ground had also to be paved in a rough-and-ready kind of way ; 

 foot-roads had also to be arranged for the convenience of the 



* Mr. Ashworth, in a communication to Mr. Barry, one of the Commis- 

 sioners of Irish Ksheries, says— " No charge is made for the oyster-parks, 

 hut each plot is marked and defined on a map, and the produce is con- 

 sidered to he the private property of the person who establishes -it. They 

 vary in size twenty or thirty yards square, the stone or tdes are placed in 

 rows ahout five feet apart, with-the ends open so as to admit of the wash of 

 the tide in and out." 



