a little subdued, betook himself to his
children's heads, and Mary to her lithography,
with the steady perseverance which
daily wants, and nothing but daily wants,
elicit.

Mary spent more shillings than was strictly
prudent, in visiting the Exhibition at fashionable
hours, to see how her brother's picture
affected the general mob of observers. Most
people paused before it for a lengthy survey,
and she overheard many comments, all more
or less complimentary; now and then she
saw a fastidious connoisseur return to it again
and again to enjoy it, and, as she hoped,
notwithstanding the obscure name of the artist,
to purchase it. But this longed-for event
did not come to pass: the sultry summer
days flew by, and the Exhibition was within
a week of closing, when a curious incident
occurred; what this was shall be related in
the ensuing chapter.

                 OYSTER SEED.

THE English language knows no bounds.
As soon as a new discovery is made, it claims
the right of coining a new word to fit it.
Agriculture is of ancient date, extending
back, in a variety of georgical forms, into the
night of ages, as they say. Pisciculture is a
modern science, at least in Europe, though
the Chinese profess to have practised
fish-breeding long before it was ever dreamt of
here. There are European fish considered
very desirable to naturalise in British streams
and lakes, but which still remain aliens
to Queen Victoria's aqueous empire. Gold
and silver fish are undoubtedly oriental.
But the practice of fish-culture has hitherto
been limited to fresh waters and to fish
proper; that is, it has not been extended to
shell-fish and crustaceans. The sea, with its
multitudinous inhabitants, has hitherto been
left to take its chance; its very vastness
frightened off all interference. The proverb,
"He who embraces too much, cannot keep
tight hold," appears applicable to the ocean,
if to anything. The sea, too, has long been
regarded as an emblem of sterility and
voraciousness, swallowing up everything, and
returning nothing. An absurd and fruitless
attempt was compared by Virgil to the act
of milking he-goats and of ploughing the
sea-shore. The nineteenth century, however,
intends no longer to leave the progeny of the
sea to their own devices. It has taken up a
systematic and scientific system of turning
the sea to profitable account.

Nature may be liberal, naturally; she may,
and does, furnish us with abundant supplies,
otherwise we should long since have starved,
at least as far as fish and shell-fish are
concerned. But it is now thought (and was
proved last summer) that Nature will be the
better for a helping hand in the fields of
Ocean, as well as in the fields of Earth; and,
as the culture of the sea has been proposed,
seconded, carried, and performed, we are in
possession of a new science—Mariculture, as
we will presume to style it. The sea is to be
rendered infinitely more productive than it
has been, by artificial means. Its live stock
is to be increased a hundredfold, a thousandfold,
a millionfold, or more. How many
different species of marine domestic animals
will thus be taken under the guardianship of
man, remains at present uncertain; time will
probably extend the list. At present,
oyster-culture is the scheme in vogue; and there
seems no reason to doubt that, instead of
finding oyster-beds here and there, at blind
hap-hazard, we may increase them indefinitely,
in all convenient situations on our own
enormous line of coast, at home and abroad,
in the mother country and in the colonies,
in North America as well as in New Zealand.
What has been done once can be done
again.

The French are very fond of oysters. Any
oyster goes down with them; oysters of
greyish and greenish complexion, which an
English native would be ashamed to own for
a relation, are swallowed, beards and all, by
dainty dames. A dish of oysters, washed down
by a bottle of small white wine, is a breakfast
for a prince, of which his princess will partake
without hard pressing. Secondly, for the
sake of protection to French fisheries, the
consumption of all sorts of English-caught
fish is hindered with a pertinacity which,
approaches to unreasoning prejudice and
blind folly. But French Oyster-beds are
running short, and fail to furnish the supply
required. The French oyster-fishery has fallen
into such a state of décadence, that if some
speedy remedy be not applied, every productive
source will soon be exhausted. At La
Rochelle, at Marennes, at Rochefort, at the
Islands of Ré and Oléron, out of twenty-three
beds which heretofore constituted the main
riches of this portion of the coast, eighteen
are completely ruined; while those which
still yield a certain supply are gravely
compromised by the increasing invasion of
mussels. Consequently, the oyster-merchants of
that neighbourhood, being no longer able to
obtain a sufficient catch to keep their pits
stocked with the oysters which it is their
business to fatten and bring to perfection
therein, are put to the great expense of fetching
them from the coast of Brittany, and yet
are unable to meet the public consumption.
The same decrease in the oyster population
is going on elsewhere generally, as far as
France is concerned. It is fast retreating
either before an advancing army of mussels,
as at Marennes, or a suffocating stream of
marly mud, as on certain portions of the
roadstead at Brest.

The French epicure is therefore tantalised
by a couple of impossibilities; one physical,
the other moral. He is told that he cannot
have his fill of Gallic oysters, because a full
meal of Gallic oysters does not exist; and