Oyster Culture in England. IQ! 
the dredge will scarcely pay for the labour of working it. 
The banks surrounding Spithead, and extending for miles 
east and west of the anchorage, were equally prolific with 
the inland water of Langston, Emsworth, and Chichester, 
but they are now becoming equally barren. For very many 
years past all the grounds available to the dredger have 
been ruthlessly worked, and everything of the oyster kind, 
from the spat clinging to the stones, brought up in the 
dredge, to the patriarch of unknown age, has been carried 
off, the eatable portion sent to the market, and all small 
stuff carried off to Whitstable and other places, to stock 
private ponds. But this has not been the worst evil the 
oyster has had to contend with in fighting for existence 
on the great shoals of the Horse, the Dean, and others on 
the Isle of Wight shore and off Chichester harbour. About 
ten years back certain portions of Portsmouth harbour and 
the harbour channel were deepened by steam dredging 
machines, and an immense quantity of black mud was con- 
veyed out of the harbour in the contractors’ barges and 
discharged on these shoals, the result being, that the greater 
part of the oysters, as well as the spawn of other fish, was 
poisoned, and invaluable fishing grounds converted into a 
barren waste. Thus, what with over-fishing by the fisher- 
men and the poisoning of the banks at the hands of the 
Government, the extensive range of banks outside Lang- 
ston, Emsworth, and Chichester harbours were nearly de- 
nuded of their fish, and the inner waters of the harbours 
with their preserved grounds suffered accordingly. There 
is still, however, abundance of oysters on the outer banks 
to stock them thoroughly, ifthe waters could only be placed 
under a strict conservancy, and we will take two extreme 
points of the grounds in proof of this assertion. On the 
line of shore which extends about 4,000 yards from the 
west side of Langston harbour’s mouth to Southsea Castle, 
it is still possible now for one man to collect on the first 
flow of the tide after a south-east gale, a bushel basketful 
of fine clean oysters. These have been rolled over the 
Horse and Dean Shoals by the scour of the water in the 
gale. The other illustration is, that about seven miles out 
seaward from Southsea beach, there are three small shoals 
lying ina triangular form in 4} fathoms at low water. 
These three shoals have been fished from time inumemorial, 
and until the recent scarcity of oysters in the market, the 
dredge would always bring up at least, one half full of 
oysters, the remainder being clean round boulders about 
Rea 
