OYSTER-FAKMS IN KENT AND ESSEX. 255 



may be made a most lucrative concern. As a guide to the 

 working of a very large oyster-farm — say a concern of £70,000 

 a year or thereabout — I shall give immediately some data of 

 the Whitstable Free Dredgers' Company ; but I wish first to 

 say that the organisation which is constantly at work for 

 supplying the great metropolis with oysters is more perfect than 

 can be said of any other branch of the fish trade. In oyster- 

 culture we approach in some degree to the French, although we 

 do not, as they do, except as regards some new companies, begin 

 at the beginning and plant the seed. All that we have yet 

 achieved is the art of nursing the young " brood," and of 

 dividing and keeping separate the different kinds of oysters. 

 This is done in parks or farms on various portions of the coasts 

 of Kent and Essex, and the whole process, from beginning to 

 end, may be viewed at Whitstable, where there is a large oyster- 

 ground and a fine fleet of boats kept for the purpose of dredg- 

 ing and planting, I have already stated that the Whitstable 

 oyster-beds are held as by a joint-stock company, into which, 

 however, there is no other way of entrance than by birth, as 

 none but the free dredgemen of the town can hold shares. 

 When a man dies his interest in the company dies with him, 

 but his widow — if he was a married man — obtains a pension. 

 The sales from the public and private beds of Whitstable some- 

 times attain a total of £200,000 per annum. The business of 

 the company is managed by twelve directors, who are known as 

 " the Jury." The stock of oysters held in the private layings 

 of the company is said to be of the value of J200,000. The 

 extent of the public and other oyster-ground at Whitstable is 

 about twenty-seven square miles. 



The oyster-ferm of Whitstable is a co-operation in the best 

 sense of the term, and has been in existence for a long period : it 

 is the wealthiest and largest oyster corporation in the world. 

 The layings at Whitstable occupy about a mile and a half square, 

 and the oyster-beds there have been so very prosperous as to 

 have attained the name of the " happy fishing-groimds." At 

 Whitstable, Faversham, and adjoining grounds, a space of twenty- 

 seven square miles, as I have mentioned above, is taken up in 

 oyster-farms, and the industry carried on in this space of ground 

 involves the annual earning and expenditure of a very large sum 

 of money. Over 3000 people are employed in the various in- 

 dustries connected with the fishery, who earn capital wages 

 all the year round — the sum , paid for labour by the different 



