SEA-FISHERIES laboratory. 87 



to insist on breathing filtered air and eating nothing but 

 sterile food washed down with antiseptic drinks, we 

 should probably die of starvation or something worse, if 

 we did not go mad first with the constant anxiety. 

 Pasteur once started the interesting question, which is 

 now being worked out, whether the life of a higher animal, 

 such as man, is possible under absolutely aseptic condi- 

 tions, free from all germs. Whether possible or not, it 

 would certainly not be desirable. We probably owe more, 

 on the whole, to micro-organisms than will counterbalance 

 what we suffer from them. 



Consequently, I would urge the exercise of common- 

 sense by the public, and of moderation on the part of some 

 sanitary reformers. By all means let us get our oyster 

 beds as healthy as possible but do not insist upon con- 

 ditions which will make it impossible to rear any oysters 

 at all. 



Professor Boyce and I, as the result of our work at this 

 subject — oysters and disease — for the last two years, recom- 

 mended a year ago (in the report for 1895 on the Lancashire 

 Sea-Fisheries Laboratory) two sanitary measures — namely, 

 1st, the inspection of all grounds upon which shellfish 

 are grown or bedded so as to ensure their practical 

 freedom from sewage ; and, 2nd, the use, when necessary, 

 of what the French call degorgeoirs — tanks of clean 

 water, in which the oysters should be placed for a short 

 time before they are sent to the consumer. I am inclined 

 now to suggest that a combination of these two methods 

 would be a practical and satisfactory solution of the 

 present difficulty. The degorgeoirs may be regarded as a 

 precautionary measure of the nature of quarantine, to 

 which oysters from foreign or unknown beds, or such as 

 are suspected from any reason, should be subjected. Our 

 experiments at University College have shown, as Professor 



