190 Oyster Culture in England. 
little wasthisan eleemosynary measure,that he (Mr. Arnold), 
who had been most closely connected with its operation, 
would not recommend that its powers and provisions should 
-be made generally at all times applicable to the entire 
kingdom. He would do this on sanitary and economic 
grounds. He had observed that the advantage of borrow- 
ing directly from the Government is highly valued by the 
local authorities ; the officers of the Government are able 
to check expenditure upon works not properly within the 
scope of such a measure, and to spread, by advice and sug- 
gestion, information as to the best and most approved modes 
of construction—and especially of details of construction ; 
the low and unvarying rate of interest at which the State 
can, without national loss, make loans, does vastly promote 
the execution of sanitary works, as it obviously affects their 
economy. The advantage has been very apparent in some 
rural parishes. The Sanitary Act of last Session has 
already rendered permanent many of the temporary powers 
conferred by the Public Works Act; and Mr Arnold had 
no hesitation in repeating his humble opinion that the 
whole of its provisions, so far as they relate to the execu- 
tion of necessary sanitary works, with an increased credit 
with the Exchequer, might be generally enacted with ad- 
vantage to the economy of public works. 
OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 
if N the times when the Romans held their fortus magnus 
in the upper waters of Portsmouth harbour and an- 
chored their galleys under the walls of the fortress whose 
remains may now be traced in the ruins of the Norman 
Castle of Porchester, the great estuary of waters which ex- 
tended east to nearly the walls of Regnum, or Chichester, 
as the ancient city was afterwards named, was famous for 
its oysters and the almost endless varieties of fish found in 
its many creeks and inlets. This reputation holds to the 
present day, but the improvidence of man has in many in- 
stances extirpated the oyster from grounds it had held 
since first covered by tidal waters, and on others has so re- 
duced its numbers that, dear as all sizesof the bivalvenoware, — 
from the three months’ oysterling to the full grown native, 
