progress which ostriculture has made up to
the present time.

The roadstead chosen for the accomplishment
of this design offers (on a solid bottom,
naturally clean and composed of shell or
madrepore-sand slightly covered with marl
or mud), an area of twelve thousand hectares,
everywhere favourable to the residence of
the parent mollusc. A hectare is equal to
nearly two acres and a-half English. The
current which, at every tide oscillates from
north-west to south-west, and from south-west
to north-west, at the rate of about two
miles and a-half per hour, brings with it a
ceaseless renovation of water, sweeps away
in its course every unhealthy deposit, and by
breaking on the numerous rocks, contracts
those vivifying powers which are communicated
by an incessant aëration. The excellence
of the bottom and the active nature of
the limpid waters which cover it, combine,
therefore, throughout this immense submarine
domain, all the conditions necessary to favour
the multiplication and development of the
esculent mollusc which it is proposed there
to acclimatise, and whose produce is
expected to furnish annually an inexhaustible
harvest.

But what Science, in her work of intervention
tion and conquest, had counselled as an
enterprise of public utility, Empiricism and
Routine had condemned beforehand as a piece
of chimerical fool-hardiness. There were,
therefore, plenty of opponents and prophets
of failure. It is an honour to Science, that in
this case she has maintained her dignity, by
showing that in natural history, as in
astronomy, abstract theories may be made
subservient to practical results, so as even to
render the seas a domain accessible to human
knowledge and industry. And thus
Physiology exercises her empire over organic
nature, by an application of the laws of life.

The immersion of the parent shell-fish,
commenced in March last, was completed towards
the end of April, under Monsieur Coste's
inspection and superintendence. In this short
space of time, three million oysters, some
taken from the open sea, others from Cancale,
others from Treguier, were distributed in
ten longitudinal beds themselves situated in
different parts of the bay, and representing
altogether a superficies of a thousand
hectares. These beds had been previously traced
on a marine chart indicating the fertile spots,
and marked by buoys and floating flags, to
guide the course of the vessels which sowed
the oysters. But in order that this sowing
process should be performed with the
regularity of an agricultural operation, and that
the mother oysters should be dropped
sufficiently apart not to interfere with each other,
a government steamer, sometimes the Ariel,
and sometimes the Antilope, took in tow the
boats that were laden with the shell-fish,
and so dragged them backwards and
forwards longitudinally, as regularly as a plough
traces successive parallel furrows in a
field.

While the tug-steamer was performing this
manoeuvre, her crew (dispersed amongst the
flotilla of boats that were being towed)
emptied into the sea the baskets of oysters
that were the seed-corn of this new maricultural
experiment. But, to insure success, it
was not enough to place the colony of oysters
in conditions favourable to their multiplication;
it was also requisite to organise
around them and over them ready means of
receiving and harbouring their progeny, so
as to compel it to fix itself on the spot where
it began to disperse: for the immersion took
place at the period of the earliest spawning.
This second operation, which transformed
the fertilised gulf into a sort of submarine
nursery or stock-farm, was accomplished by
means of two contrivances whose simultaneous
employment has already given immense
results, and which, at no distant epoch, will
enable the oyster harvest to be augmented
to any extent, provided that preliminary
measures are extended in proportion to the
requirements of the case.

The first artful dodge consists in paving
the bottom of the sea where the productive
beds are to be made with old oyster shells or
any other shells, so that not a single embryo
shall issue from the parent oyster without
meeting with a solid substance on which it
can fix itself. Sea-shells, of whatever species,
gathered from the beach, answer perfectly.
In no instance would any serious difficulty
be encountered in the collection and
transport of old oyster shells. The second
cunning scheme (namely, that intended to attract
and retain the spawn which would be carried
away by the currents, and to cause it to
settle on solid substances at the bottom of
the eddies formed, when it does not otherwise
fix itself) is effected by long lines of
slender fascines or bunches of twigs placed
crosswise at regular distances along the
whole length of every bed, thus forming a
sort of successive barriers or hedges from
end to end. These fascines—real seed-collectors
and spawn-traps—are formed of
branches of trees four or five yards long, are
fastened together by a rope at the middle of
their length, and are sunk by a ballast of
stones, so that they rest a foot or eighteen
inches above the productive beds. A man,
dressed in a diving apparatus, goes down to
see that all is right, and to stick some of the
oysters immediately under the twigs. The
rope which, in the hurry of a first experiment,
was obliged to be employed, decayed
very speedily; for the future, perhaps, it
will be better to replace it by cables of
galvanised iron, to be made in the government
arsenals, which will be charged with the task
of supplying the apparatus necessary for this
new species of culture. Sea-marks, on
carefully prepared charts, afford a certain guide
whenever it is desirable to examine the