The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-16 00:00:00

OYSTER CULTURE 11V ENGLAND.

There appeared last year a notice of what had
been recently doing on the south coast of England
and the north coast of France, but more particularly
referring to attempts just commenced on the former,
in the establishment of oyster farms for the breed-

ing, growth, and fattening of oysters for the mar-
ket. The oyster farms on the coast of France con-
tinue their work successfully, and supply a vast
number of oysters to the Paris and other markets ;

but their succes3 is understood to hare been more

marked in the growth and fattening of purchased
oysters laid down in their pares than in the raising
of spat from the old fish. The same may be said of
most of the oyster farms on the English coast,
although there are exceptions here to which we shall
presently refer. In the establishment of any oyster
farm, where the operations are mainly intended for

the breeding of oysters that are to be afterwards pre-
served for growth and fattened for the market on the
same grounds, there is a large outlay of capital made
in the first instance, and three or four years mut
then elapse—presuming that a rise of spat has been

obtained from the first batch of oysters laid down

in the prepared beds —before any return can be

obtained from this original expenditure. With this
important fact ever present for the consideration of
the oyster producer, it is not surprising that a far

greater amount of attention has been paid by them
to the growth and fattening of oysters purchased
from coast dredgers than to the raising of spat from

old fish. The acknowledged result of this course
has, however, been to denude natural breeding

groundi on both coasts of fish, old and young, and

it has only been the almost insurmountable dVliculty
met with for several years now past procuring

oystera of any kind suitable for the fattening beds
that has tined the attention of people in the
direction of breeding as well as fattening oysters
for the table. Mr. Lowe, one of the secre-
tarics of the Acclimatisation Society, has stated
that, in answer to his inquiries concerning the
French natural oyster beds, he was informed that
the number of oysters dredged from the Cancale
deep sea beds in 1863 was under four mil!inns,

while 12 years previously the take averaged 60 mn!•

lions. He also refers to the well-known fact of the
d;scovery of a bed of oysters lying off in the Chan-

nel between the two coasts, which was three wiles

in length. In a very short time the oyster-dredgers
cleared the bank and destroyed all life for reproduc-

tion by their rapacity. Mr. Ffennel, Inspector of
Fisheries to the English Government, reported a
few years since that on one part of the Irish was*,
one bed of oysters gave employment to 2,000 fisher-
men, but so recklessly were the beds dredged for the
unfortunate bivalves that the freight, which once
reached £l,OOO per week in the season, had fa".en
down to £3OO per annum. The French were the
first to appreciate the full weight of the suicidal
policy prrsued for the supply of oysters by this over-
dredging of the natural deep-sea breeding grounds.

MM. Coste and Kemmerer may be considered to
have been the pioneers of the new state of things
on the French coast, where the main supply of the
future for the markets is looked for from the breed-

ing beds established at St. Brieuc and other places.
Referring to what the French have done in this re-
spect, Dr. Henry Lawson, the late ea:tor of the
Popular Science Review, says :—" The most con-

vincing evidence of all is that afforded by the Isle o
R. Five years since the shores of this island
were barren and uncultivated ; now they give em-
ployment to 8,000 men, and the crop of oysters
produced in 1861 was valued at £320,000 sterling."
The oyster farms on the Isle of R 6 are, however,
much more valuable and productive now than at the
time Dr. Lawson wrote of them.
The most successful instance of the rise of oyster
spat and its preservation up to this time on
the English coast for the present year has oc-
curred on the same part of the coast as it did
last summer—at Haying Island, a few miles
east of the Isle of Wight, where an enclosed
area of water of 18 acres, and of from five to six
feet in depth, may be almost said to be crowded
with young oysterEngs. To show, however, clearly
what has been done and is now doing with oysters
at Ilayling we must leave the baby moluscs, and
travel backwards for a short time. We may refer
to the " Domesday Book," and find there the Hay-
ling and Ensworth oyster beds referred to, and
marked with a certain annual value, those of Ems-
worth being valued at 6s. Bd. Looking back through
the haze of centuries, in fact, there is no apparent
limit to be found to the time of the laying down of
the oyster in the waters of the harbours now called
" Langston," " Emsworth," and " Chichester." In
making excavations for the formation of new beds
a few weeks back at Hayling, through a morass
that must have been a morass for ever, the remains
of a skeleton were found which had been interred in
the ancient manner, with the knees drawn up to the
chin, and with the remnants of oyster and other
shells with it. A few moments after exposure to
the atmosphere the bones fell into indistinguishable
form in dust. The natives of the island, so it has
been said, aver this to have been the remains of the
man who first tasted an oyster
The natural capabilities of the coast line and in-
dented creeks of Hayling Island for artificial aids
in the culture of the oyster, which for unknown
centuries had bred there, first led, in 1865, to a
private and successful attempt at raising spat, and
afterwards to the formation of a company to enable
the work to be carried out on a requisite scale.
This company have so far been most fortunate,
although no returns will be seen for the outlay of
capital in the raising of spat alone for two years to
come, and its experience thus far in the somewhat
uncertain business of oyster raising is worth some
attention from all who may have a weakness for the
" inhabitant of the shell," or may take an interest,
business or otherwise, in pisciculture.
The first great experiment made by the Hayling
Oyster Fishery was made on the site of some old
salterns at the south-east extremity of the island,
the entire water area experimented in being about
31 acres. The results of the experiment were of a
most unaccountable although satisfactory character,
and when we state that precisely similarly puzzling
results have been obtained this year at the opposite
side of the island, and on a very much larger area of
water, we may possibly have said enough to fully
rouse the interest of the reader. In the spring of
last year two pares were prepared for the old oys-
ters to throw off their spat in—one on the plan pur-
sued on Lake Fusaro, in Italy, and the other on the
French plan pursued on the Ile de Re. The Fusaro
bed, as we may term it for plainness of description,
was of about 3ft. depth of water, which, as a gene-
ral rule, might be considered as still water, fresh
water only being admitted at spring tides through a
sluice gate from the harbour outside the banks of
the oyster farm. The bed of this pare was partly
covered with shingle, and ou this shingle were laid
early in April 50,000 oysters from deep sea beds ;
light and flat hurdles formed of hazel sticks and
brushwood were laid over the oysters, and held by
stakes in the bed of the pond a certain distance
above them. The other bed, on the plan of the
French at Ile de Re, was entirely laid with shingle
(over the saltern beds), and had a constantly yet
gentle running stream of water passing over it. In
lieu of using hazel stick hurdles for collecting the
spat tiles were laid down. Both ponds, or pares,
were connected by a narrow waterway, through
which the water flowed from the Ftaaro into the

Ile de Re beds. There was no material difference in

,he time of laying down the oysters in either bed,

nor was there any difference in the quality of either.
The result of this experiment was that while the
pond on the Lake Fusaro plan was filled with spat
at spawning time, the other pond held no spat, nor
was any thrown off by its oysters subsequently.
The spat was first discovered in the first week in
June in the Fusaro pond, and there was no second

display. Unfortunately for this supply of young
oysterlings, really magnificent by reason of their
number and the manner in which they had thriven

by the beginning of the following September, it was
determincd, contrary to the advice of the com-
pany's manager, to allow the young oysters to re-
main attached to the hurdles in their first position
for a certain time, and until they had obtained

a larger size. The consequence was that the shell
of the growing babies grew round the sticks of the
hurdles, and in subsequently removing the under
shell was broken in three cases out of four, and 75
per cent. of the fish destroyed. Oysters that did not
suffer from this barbarous detaching process at a
wrong period of life are now flourishing amazingly

- -
in pares specially prepared for their comfort and

growth on the site of the Ile de Re beds of last year's
experiment, and which has now undergone an entire
remodelling and arrangement. In their new home

the oyster spat gathered and saved from off the

hurdles laid over the oysters in the Fusaro parc now

measure from a minimum size of 1 inch to a maxi-

mum of 2 inches in diameter. In September, 1869,
these oysters will be in the market for consumption

on our tables. The successful experiment of last
year in the Fusaro water was, of course, repeated
this year with, as nearly as possible, the same pre-
liminary attendant conditions. Strangely enough,
however, and curiously illustrative, as it proves, of
the uncertainty of oyster hatching, no spat rose this

year from the depths of what promised last year to
be the richest oyster mine in England. No known
and reliable theory can account for this striking
difference by the marked success of one year and the
failure of the next.

This part of the company's grounds is being re-
arranged. They now comprise one breeding pond
(the old Fusaro water) empty, and cleaning out in
readiness for future operations, and six acres of
water space, divided into nine pares, lying parallel
with each other. Each parc is enclosed by puddled
clay walls, lined with chalk blocks, and has its water
sluice at the head and foot. The floor, or bed, is
made of shingle sand, and has a fall of about 20in.

from head to foot. A reservoir trench, running
across the head of the pares, and having communi-

cation with the harbor waters, gives a means of
water supply to the pares through the head sluices,
and a cleansing of their bed by rushing the water
through them and out through the foot sluices into
the drain trench. The latter also acts as a canal ,
for the flat-boat in any visit to the pares and their
contents. It is a very important fact that in the
shallowest of these pares during last winter not one
of the young oysterlings of the previous summer's
spat was known to have been kiled by the cold
weather or frost.
It is now time to return to the three-months old
oysterlings left imprisoned in the 18-acre pare at
the opposite extremity of the island.
In September of last year the company's engineer
had just commenced operations for the formation of
pare 3 and other enclosed spaces on the north-west
shore of the island, the walls of No 1 pare being at
no great d'stance from the bridge across the narrow
channel which separates Havant from the island of
Hayling. All then was in an embryo state ; now
there is one pare of 18 acres area, and one of seven
acres, both in working order. There are also ten
acres lying out in parallel beds, with puddled clay
and chalk-lined walls, trench and reservoir, as on
the old Ile de Re site, and a feeding reservoir of five
acres. In addition low walls have been commenced
over a large series of shoals between two points of
the coast, communic.ting channels are being cut for
boat service between the shoals and " rythes"
deepened, and 800 other and adjoining acres remain
for any further extension of the present range of
pares which may be found requisite. Our present
purpose is to deal more with what has been done,
however, than with what may be done here. The
18-acre pare and the adjoining one of seven acres
were both stocked with oysters during the spring of
the present year, the conditions in both cases being
as nearly as possible alike ; the oysters tkcinselves,
it is necessary to observe, being taken indiscrimi-
nately from one lot and deposited at the same time
in both pares. The water in both ranged from sft.
to 6ft. in depth, and wattle-work hurdles of hazel
sticks and fine twigs were staked down over the
oysters, and at a certain height above them. Two
thousand tubs of oysters were laid down. On the
Ist of June the presence of spat was first dis-
covered in the 18-acre part, and by the 6th the
births of the oyster 4 baby hosts were evi-
dently brought to a close for the season. Sixteen
thousand hurdles were staked over the old
oysters. These hurdles are now being taken up, and
the oysterlings removed, with the bark, from the
larger sticks by a number of men and lads employed
for the purpose, and the smaller twigs cut into short
lengths of four or five inches. These strips of bark
and cut lengths of twigs, with the oysterlings at-
tached in sizes varying from a pea to that of a large
horse-bean, are then sent away to the pares pre-
pared for their reception and growth for market.
Taking the lowest estimate of the numbers of oyster-
lings on each of these hurdles taken up from the
18-acre pare.as the spat there of the season, they
cannot average less than 5,000, giving a grand total
of 80,000,000 young oysters as stock for market in
1870-1. The manager of the company, Mr. Geo.
W. Hart, intends removing the oysterlings al-
together from the hazel bark and twigs as soon as
this can be done without danger to the life of the
fish, and in this decision he will be acting on a cor-
rect principle. The earlier an oysterling is removed
from any rigid material of uneven surface the better
for its future growth and health.
It was estimated in 1864 that seven hundred mil-

lions of oysters were consumed annually in London,
and considerably more than that number in the
provinces. With our growing population annually
increasing the number of oyster eaters what a grand
future appears to be looming upon the future for
oyster producers 1
The following are the registered average tempera-
tures of the water in the 18-acre pare at ilayling
during the months of May, June, July, and August,
taken 3f t. under water, and in the shade by day :-
1867. Maximum. Minimum.
May.— By day 61 deg.
By night 6O dog.
June.—By day 67 deg. 63 deg.
By night
July. —By day 70 dog.
By night 7O deg.
Aug. —By day 70 deg 66 dog.
By night
At the close of September last the minimum tem-
perature of the air was found to be 43 deg., the
temperature of the water in the 18-acre pare, at the
same time was tested, and found to be 58 deg.

1k THE PERUVIAN LOAN.—Yesterday, at the
Chancery Chambers, the case of " Smith v. Weguelin,
M.P., and others," was discussed on an application for
time to file an affidavit of documents. The case was as to
the proceeds of guano sent by the Peruvian Government
to this country, and the proceods were sought by the bond
holders to be made available in respect to the Peruvian
Loan of 1862, of £5,000,000. The chief clerk gave 14 days'
time in respect to the documents.
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SPEECH OF THE BISHOP OF ONTARIO AT
MAN CHESTER.

The annual meeting of the supporters of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel was held on Monday even-
ing, in the Free-Trade Hall, under the presidency of It.
Neill, Esq., the mayor of the city. Tho Bishop of Now
Zoaland and the Bishop of Ontario wore present.
The Bishop of ONTARIO moved tho first resolntion, and
in the course of his speech asked—At the end of the last
century what was the state of the Church of England as
regarded missionary effort? There was ono feeble colo-
nial diocese. The Church of England was so completely
insular, that it in a groat measure deserved the sneer of
Lord Macaulay, that "it was as local an institution as
the Court of Common Pleas." That was not a satisfac-
tory condition for a church which claimed to bo catholic
and apostolic. Thus a grave objection was put into the
mouth of those who wished to object that a
church so insular, so isolated, and so cut off from sym-
pathy with the rest of the world, however she might pre-
tend to be Catholic, di I not act at all events as though she
wore. (Hear, hear.) That was only 50 years ago, and half
a century in the life of the Church was as nothing. But
what did they see that day ? Not ono feeble colonial dio-
cese, but that the colonial dioceses of Great Britain, all of
them essentially missionary, wore more numerous than the
English, Irish, and Scotch put together. Thoy saw the
colonial dioceses of the Church of England now girdling the
earth, and just as it was the boast that the sun never sot
upon land where the English flag was unknown, so as mis-
sionary Churchmen they might now say the sun never sot
upon the missionary churches of the Church of England,
and from the rising of that sun to the going down of the
same God was honoured in their missionary churches, and
that in the time-honoured words of their inestimable
Liturgy. (Applause.) That was a marvellous revolution.
What had brought it about ? It had not been effected by
anything done by Church or State ; not by Convocation of
Canterbury or Acts of Parliament, but it had been brought
about that that stigma, that reproach, and that oppro-
brium of the Church being insulated and isolated, had been
wiped away by the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts. As he was speaking to a reso-
lution that alluded to success for which they ought to be
thankful, he might be allowed to speak of that country
of which he ought to know the most, namely, Ca-
nada. When the present Bishop of Toronto wpq
ordained a priest—and he is now alive and well
—there were only four missionary clergy in that groat
country. He was alive and well, and what did he see now?
In what was the old pros ince of Canada there are now six
well-ordered dioceses, diocesan synods, lay co-operation,
and a groat degree of self-reliant and self-sacrificing spirit.
(Hear, hear.) There were, too, no fewer than four hun-
dred and fiity priests bearing the burden and heat of the
day as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, preaching the Gospel
as the Church of England held it in this day. Another
reason why they ought to thank God for the success Ile
had vouchsafed to the society was that they had an augury
from the past of what awaited them in the future if they
acted steadily in the faith. Not many days ago they had
a remarkable assemblage in London, called the Lambeth
Conference. (Much applause.) At that meeting there wore
five-and-twenty remarkable men—bishops of the Church
—the great Church of the United States of America. What
brought them there? How was it they happened to be
there ? The meeting knew well that before the revolution
which severed the United States of America from this
country there were no bishops there, that the State would
never allow it, and the Church winked at the State's
neglect.' But they knew also that things were changed,
and in that country there wrs a great Church, not nume-
rically compared with the great body of Christians, but a
church which was gathering within its folds, in a remark-
able manner, the wealth, the intelligence, the refinement,
and tho education of that great country. (Applause.)
That Church was becoming historical. To what did they
owe all that but to the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts ? And they could not get on any
missionai F platform in England more hearty suppoi:crs,
more eloquent and stern advocates for missionary work as
rendered by the society than those very bishops wore. He
said that as a proof that missionary efforts would tend to
unite them in the bonds of peace and in unity of spirit.
Who could toll who looked into the future how much that
Church, one with them in religious principles and senti-
ments, might tend to leaven public opinion in that groat
country which is a rival to our own in all that makes the
Anglo-Saxon race great and remarkable ? (Hear, hear.)
For these reasons, therefore, they should all wish to see

the society successful. They should wish it because the
society was the mother of missionary effort. In the words
of a great statesman, lately uttered, ho believed that the
colonial churches were des.ined to react upon the Church
of England, and to some degree to provoke one another to
love and good works. In his diocese they had 2,500 Mo-
hawk Indians, every one of whom was a baptised Christian
Churchman. (Applause.) Not long since he had to
visit their township, and he found that they had of their
own alms erected two handsome churches, and that they
supported their own missionaries and schools. He con-
firmed some 90 of them, and he would to God that all the
white people in his diocese who professed and called them-
selves Christians were as devout, as cxemplaiy, and as
charitable. Before he left Canada these Mohawk Indians
heard ho was raising a fund in order to make provision for
a time when the society would withdraw its grant from
his diocese. They thought it would cheer their bishop if
they showed their sympathy with the movement, and they
had voted out of their general fund $5OO. (Cheers.) What
these Christianised Mohawk Indians had done was well
worthy of imitation; and he trusted that the time would
come when, if ever he had to stand up again to speak in
behalf of this noble society, what he had to say would be
in elevation of the Church of England in those distant
colonies, which were the cradles of future empires, whore
it was necessary to mould the original population of emi-
grants with Anglo-Saxon ideas and sentiments not only
of government, but of religion.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

LEEDS-TUESDAY.

Wo had a good attendance of the trade to-day, and there
was a firm business in wheat at an advance of from 20
to 3s per qr upon the prices of last Tuesday. Good Ladd
is dearer ; common sorts sell at late rates. Oats and beaus
unaltered.