398 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
CULTURAL PROCESSES. 
Perhaps there would be no better way of understanding the character of the Eng- 
lish oyster industry, both in its management and in its processes, than by examining 
briefly a typical oyster company, as for example that of Whitstable. The Whitstable 
Company is an oyster syndicate of the most powerful type, exceptional in its antiquity 
and in its closely cooperative character. It grew up about a century ago, and in 1793 
secured by royal charter about 3 miles of the best oyster-fattening grounds of the 
Kentish flats. Its organization is an interesting one; its membership is hereditary, 
and was formerly the birthright of every son of a “ freeman” of the company. The 
number of members, however, became finally so great* that for convenience as well as 
for economy in management, a restriction was made admitting to the company only 
the eldest sons of freemen. Every member has a voice in all matters of management. 
A small evening parliament is held monthly in the assembly room of the building 
overlooking the Whitstable grounds (PI. lxxxviii, Fig. 1), and all matters of manage- 
ment, including buying and selling, are here very generally discussed. The members 
constitute a clan, with two or three family names predominating, which has come to 
regard outsiders with commercial suspicion, and has long been extremely reticent in 
regard to the ways and means of management. Each member of the company is 
entitled to a mutual dividend of profits, and to be employed with stated wages as often 
as his turn may come. The “stints” in the necessary cultural operations of the 
grounds are known and assigned to members beforehand, and “ a bell is carried round 
and rung every morning to rouse the dredgers whose turn it is for duty.”! An idea 
may be obtained of the extent of the Whitstable Company when we consider its small 
army of employes, its fleet of sixty dredging boats (PL lxxxvii, Fig. 1), and its invested 
capital in cultivated oysters valued at $1,000,000. The annual sales of the company 
are estimated at from $800,000 to $1,000,000. 
In an industry like that of the Whitstable Company it is quite evident that the 
amount of natural set upon the cultivated grounds must be an almost inappreciable 
portion of the seed oysters that are there cultivated. It is said, in fact, that all of the 
seed that can annually be purchased on the 30 square miles of Kentish flats, or in all 
other natural oyster-producing regions of Britain, could together form but a small 
item in the annual purchases of the company. So favorable, though, are the conditions 
for growing and fattening oysters at Whitstable that the exact origin of seed oysters 
seems a matter of minor importance; at the end of three years the seed purchased 
economically from Auray has become in every appreciable regard an “English native.” 
The processes of growing and fattening oysters are not widely different from those 
of Connecticut; the methods of culture employed by the French or Dutch have cer- 
tainly not been followed. 
Seed oysters (“ brood ” oysters) are usually purchased in the early spring, when 
they are taken to a portion of the grounds where not more than a fathom of water is 
retained at low tide, and are strewn thickly over the bottom. There seems to be no 
danger at Whitstable of planting too thickly, there being apparently no dearth of 
food organisms, and the dredgers believe that “ oysters fish (fatten) better when they 
are thick laid.” Dangers from mud or sand do not occur. The bottom is smooth 
* In 1876 there were 400 members. 
t See Philpots’, loc. cit., p. 364, for a very interesting discussion of the Whitstable fishery. 
