THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 214.— October, 1894, 



CONTINENTAL OYSTER CULTURE. 

 By Capt. C. C. Longkidge, Assoc. Inst. C.E. 



For much of the information in these articles I am indebted 

 to Dr. Professor D. Carazzi, Director of the Museum at Spezia ; 

 to Mr. J. G. Haggard, Her Majesty's Consul at Trieste ; and to 

 Signor E. Allodi, one of the Directors of the Austrian Society 

 for Fisheries and Sea Fishing. The subject is divided syntheti- 

 cally and analytically ; in the first articles the various methods of 

 culture are described, in the last certain practical conclusions 

 are deduced. Illustrations of the systems are in the hands of 

 the writer, from whom particulars can be obtained. 



I. — Italian Oyster Culture. 

 A typical instance of the Italian system is found on the 

 Oyster farms of the Mare Piccolo of Taranto. Behind the town 

 and to the east, the sea forms a small bay, and is divided into two 

 basins by the promontory of Penna. This tongue of land leaves 

 an opening of about 500 yards between the basin nearer the 

 town — the inner sea, and that more remote — the outer sea. 

 Neither of these basins is more than two miles wide, and the two 

 together are about five miles long. The north side of the Mare 

 Piccolo receives a few streamlets of fresh water, and the inner sea 

 covers two springs of fresh water, rising a few hundred yards 

 from the shore. The bottom of the Mare Piccolo is a black, 

 soft, odoriferous mud, which, near the town, is polluted with the 

 sewage of 300,000 inhabitants. Fortunately natural conditions 



ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XVIII. OCT, 1894. 2 F 



