fascines or to take their produce. The fisherman
can gather specimens from time to time
as easily as a gardener can taste the fruit of
his espalier trees.

Such were the first measures taken for the
fertilisation of the Bay of Saint Brieuc, not a
twelvemonth ago; and already the promises
of science are responded to by a surprising
reality. The results have surpassed the
dreams of the most ambitious hope. The
parent oysters, the old shells with which the
bottom of the bay is paved, everything, in
short, which the drag brings up, is laden
with young oyster-fry—the shingle of the
beach itself is covered with it. The fascines
bear, on every branch and on their smallest
twigs, bunches of oysters in such extreme
profusion that they resemble the apple and
pear-trees in an orchard, whose boughs are
hidden in spring beneath the exuberance of
their blossoms. You might take them to be
petrifactions of some exuberant fossil seeds
or buds. As such a marvel obtains easier
credence by sight than by hearsay, specimens
have been sent to Paris to bear irrécusable
testimony to the fact. The young oysters
hanging to the twigs are already from three-
quarters of an inch to an inch and a quarter
in breadth. They are therefore fruits which
have only to ripen to give in eighteen months
a most abundant return. It appears from
this, that oysters grow much quicker than is
generally imagined. There are as many as
twenty thousand oysterlings on a single
fascine which takes up no more room in the
water than a sheaf of wheat does in a
cornfield. Now, twenty thousand oysters, when
they have reached the edible state, represent
a value of four hundred francs, or sixteen
pounds sterling, their price current being
twenty francs the thousand, sold on the spot.
The returns from this industry are
consequently inexhaustible, because collecting
apparatus can be submerged to any extent,
and we have seen that every adult oyster
belonging to a bed is the parent of from
one to three millions of fry. The Bay of
Saint Brieuc will thus become a veritable
granary of abundance if, by the junction
of the beds already made, the whole of
its area is converted into one vast field of
production.

Monsieur Coste, therefore, asks of the
government an annual credit of ten thousand
francs, for three years, to complete effectually
the submarine preserves and oyster parks so
prosperously commenced. That sum, he
estimates, would suffice for the purchase of
parent oysters, the fabrication of fascines, the
collection of old shells to receive the fresh-
deposited spawn, in short, for all expenses.
The accomplishment of the project will be
not merely a benefit conferred on the
inhabitants of the neighbouring coast; it will
also be a lesson taught them. The main
precaution needful to be taken, is to prevent
the new formed beds from being choked
with sand, in consequence of the fishermen
who drag for shell-sand, approaching too
near.

The Professor of Embryogeny urges that
the experiment of the Bay of Saint Brieuc, is
so decisive that people cannot help being
enlightened by what it teaches. It proves,
by a brilliant result, that wherever the
bottom of the sea is safe from an inroad of
mud, industry, guided by science, can raise in
the bosom of waters fertilised by its agency,
more abundant harvests than can be reaped
on dry land. He advises the Emperor to
ordain the immediate re-stocking of the whole
of the French coasts with shell-fish,—the
Mediterranean coast as well as the Atlantic,
the Algerian equally with the Corsican, not
even excepting the salt lakes in the south
of France, whose produce would enrich
the indigent population dwelling on their
banks.

The hopes held forth respecting the salt
lakes, as well as the difference of the waters of
the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, raise a
question which Monsieur Coste has doubtless
considered, and which will have to be carefully
investigated before mariculture can arrive
at anything like completeness as an art. We
require to know, not merely what esculent
creatures will exist in the medium, which is
sweepingly styled salt-water, but in what
particular quality of salt water they attain
their greatest edible perfection.

Now, it is a popular error to divide all
waters into two kinds only, the fresh and
the salt, as much as it would be to speak of
all climates as either hot or cold. There are
as many intermediate degrees of saltness as
of temperature, which are agreeable, in a
different measure, to the constitution of
different species of aquatic or marine
animals. And there is no guessing beforehand
what each will like, or what it can
stand.

Mr. Darwin, in his Naturalist's Journal,
tells of living things found in saturated
ponds of brine. Among freshwater fishes,
the pike turns up on the admixture of a very
slight proportion of salt-water, as has been
occasionally seen in the East-Anglian Broads.
The perch and the bream bear more. The eel
thrives, and fattens, and acquires its best
flavour, in waters decidedly brackish. On the
other hand, several sea-fish, as the grey-mullet,
seem to have no objection to, and even
to prefer, waters with a less than usual
quantity of salt in solution. Salmon, and
not a few other sea-fish, experience a complete
change of medium every season. They
enter the fresh waters for the sake of
spawning; but the purer element may be
periodically as necessary to the then state of
their health, as it is on first hatching to that
of the fry.

It is curious, however, that the short jaunt
from salt to fresh water, and again from fresh
to salt, which proves so salutary to the fish, is