THE CULTIVATED OYSTER.

THE oyster-growers of England are not less deserving persons than the British farmer. They have con- verted what were once useless tracts of "no-man's-land,' half

sea, half mud and stones, into productive ground. They have in many places preserved the species from destruction

as a source of food by the application of modern methods, when continual dredging had depleted the natural oyster grounds. When their contribution to the national dinner- table is damaged and infected because local authorities will dis- charge the sewage of their districts in the neighbourhood of.

the oyster farms, they are very naturally agitated; and though their petition that measures shall be taken to prevent any sewage whatever from passing in the crude state either into an estuary or into the sea asks rather more than can generally be granted, there is good reason to think that in many cases their prayer ought to be attended to. It is, however, very, doubtful if Sir J. Crichton Browne's suggestion that the control of sanitation and of the oyster-beds should be vested in local authorities marks the right direction for change.

Such bodies, large and small, are often the greatest offenders in these matters, their general principle being largely a development of the primitive human tendency to throw rubbish over a neighbour's wall. The complete purifica- tion of the Upper Thames was effected, not with the aid of local bodies, who mostly preferred to put their sewage into the river, but by exceptional powers given to the Con- servancy, reaching to the remotest villages on the tribu- taries. What might properly and possibly be done in the case of bodies accused, like that at Emsworth, of persisting in disregarding the advice of the Local Government Board inspectors, would be to empower the Board to carry out the improvements needed and to debit them to the rates.

Judging from some of the correspondence on the oyster question, it might be thought that the fact of their .being a.

luxury brought a Nemesis of danger as a punishment for gastronomic indulgence, and that pleasure and risk are combined by a natural law invented for our good. No such misgivings would ever occur in the United States, where oysters are so plentiful that they are not a rich man's luxury only. Their importance as one of the best and most appe- tising forms of food is generally recognised, and a typhoid scare would make a serious disturbance in household economy.

Oysters were deemed such a necessary of existence that the first stimulus to " canning " them was given by the reluctance of what we should term the working classes to be deprived of them when they went into the interior. It was not long before some firms were canning a million bushels a year, which were despatched to the prairies of the Far West, to mining camps, and to the forts on what was then the desert frontier.

Even in England, where the peculiar properties of oysters as a very appetising, nourishing, and easily digested form of food are recognised by all who have to do with invalids, an interference with the supply of this natural restorative, or doubts as to whether it may not carry the germs of sickness, are quite a serious matter. The reason why they

are so peculiarly liable to be contaminated by sewage is to be found in the general method adopted of assisting Nature

in their growth and fattening. At the same time, this method, by limiting the area on which the oysters are laid, makes the supervision of the beds far easier than it otherwise would be.

They flourish more particularly in the waters of tidal rivers, where there is a considerable mixture of cloudy mud and other matter held in solution, from which the oysters extract a great quantity of nutriment and wax fat exceedingly. A convenient sloping bank, flooded at high tide, but exposed at low water, can be covered with " store" oysters almost as thickly as they will lie. It is a profitable form of farming, and small Corporations and Harbour Boards can sometimes let the ground just as if it were a portion of trust land.

It pays to import small oysters from America, and to lay them on these English beds, where they lie till ready for sale, though not without attention from the owners, who look them over, scour away accumulations of mud, and generally main- tain the bed in the condition best suited to the rapid growth of the crop. It will be seen that this is quite a different business from oyster-dredging at sea, or from the oyster fishery which has gone on from time im- memorial in the mouths of some of our large rivers, where the bottom is largely of stones and shingle, and the shells lie under a great volume of water even at low tide.

There is practically no chance of sewage pollution in this class of oyster, and almost none in the beds situated on coast frontages where there is no estuary or town near, but where by the nature of the currents the shallow waters by the shore are full of the matter which makes the best oyster food. But given that an estuary is small, and the town on its banks large, it does not greatly matter whether the oyster- beds are above the outfall or below it. The flood tide will take the sewage to the former, and the ebb to the latter. On the other hand, such oyster-beds are usually small, and the expense of altering the system of drainage might be quite incommensurate with the advantage to be gained from maintaining the oyster-beds. Local geography, and the con- ditions of tides and currents, would be found in nearly every case to be the most important factors in any change that had to be made ; consequently, no general edict as to the treat- ment or discharge of sewage could have more than an academic effect. But there is probably one principle which would be found beneficial in most cases of oyster- bed pollution, and which might greatly improve the waters of many of our estuaries. Town sewage should, if possible, be carried directly into the sea, not poured into the estuary. The sea is big enough and salt enough and in sufficiently active movement to assimilate and purify almost any given quantity of matter poured into it. It is only an almost tide- less sea like the Mediterranean that cannot dispose con- veniently of such unpleasant matter. At Naples, while the Monarchy was flourishing in the earlier half of the last century, the line between the filthy area of sea and that which was pure was quite visible, and police were placed opposite the clean portion to see that no one took any of the clean sea water, the reason being that it might be used for making bread with, and so cheat the King of that fraction of the Salt-tax !

Modern oyster-farming is an excellent instance of intensive cultivation. It is said that eight men are employed to an acre at Whitstable. Yet the genius who is credited with having originated it in France twelve months before the men of science began their experiments was a stonemason of the Isle of Re, in the Bay of Biscay. This keen-witted stone-dresser, for such was probably his trade, the quarries of Re being anciently famous, had all the instinct for Nature which distinguished his brother - craftsman, Hugh Miller. He watched the oysters growing naturally, and concluded that he could fatten them in the cloudy waters of the neighbouring shore. He made a small dyke, placed his oysters under it among natural surroundings, and sold his surplus stock for £6 in the first year. In six years it was reckoned that there were £100,000 worth of oysters in the "parks " of those who followed his example on the same strip of coast. Apparently this ground both bred and fattened them. But usually the very young oysters need to be laid in a place where there is no mud, which chokes them in their tender years, and to be fattened later in a place where there is mud of high quality. With oysters the general rule is that you must not give strong mud to babes. On the Butley Creek, in Suffolk, it is said that oysters grow so fat that they burst. Probably this only means that they have to unbutton their shells. An oyster which has partaken so freely of the good things of this life that he outgrows his shell must be in a bad way, the more so because if be finds himself in fattening surroundings it is extremely difficult for him to change his locality.

The human interest in oysters has always been strong. They seem to have evoked something of the feeling of mixed greediness and affection felt by the Walrus and the Carpenter when— "With tears and sobs they sorted out Those of the largest size."

The Scotch oyster-dredgers always used to sing as they dragged the trawl. To talk when dredging was considered unlucky, and likely to offend the oysters, so even the most necessary remarks were intoned in a kind of recitative :— "The oyster loves the dredger's song, For he comes of a gentle kind."

But what the dredger's song actually was does not seem to be known, for it is related that an inquirer went out for a six hours' cruise to take down the words, and found at the end of it that it was never sung twice in the same sense or tune.

Of our commoner edible shellfish, the whelks, which never find their way to the tables of the rich, but are greatly beloved in the East End of London, are taken by baited nets and traps, often at some distance from the shore. The cockles are not farmed, and are an entirely natural product. They are never contaminated, being dug out of the vast sand flats, or clay flats, of the coast—an excellent food and a wholesome—the very best being those from Stiffkey, in Nor- folk. Mussels, so much used in French cookery, are commonly regarded here with suspicion. They are believed at times to contain a poison of a dangerous kind, and are often fattened in beds where even less apparent care is taken to preserve them from sewage contamination than is exhibited in the case of the oyster-beds. Nevertheless there ought to be a future for mussel-farming in England, to which the Fisheries Depart- ment of the Board of Trade may well direct its attention.