The Art of Living in Australia: Together with Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory Kitchen Information by Mrs. H. Wicken

times of drought, however, the salt water drives out the oysters from the deeper beds by reason of its greater density. On the other hand, the fresh water, being the lighter, floats at the top and enables the oysters to live in the shallower parts, by maintaining the required 3 per cent. of salinity. It is evident from this, that the lessees have acted in direct opposition to this natural law, for they have stripped the oysters from the shallow water, where they would have done well, and laid them down on the deep beds, where the increased percentage of salt water has proved too much for them. Dr. James C. Cox, of Sydney, the President of the Fisheries Commission, and our best known authority on conchology, has contributed a very valuable paper upon "The Australian Oyster, its Cultivation and Destruction," to the recent official work, THE FISHERIES OF NEW SOUTH WALES, already referred to. A brief summary of his views will, therefore, be full of interest. First of all, then, he separates oysters into three classes, namely, drift oysters, mud oysters, and rock oysters. Now, this classification must be clearly borne in mind, as it will the better enable the reader to understand what follows. He attributes the want of success in our oysteries to several causes, which have not been sufficiently heeded. One of these is that the oyster culturists have expected that the seed oysters which they obtained from between high and low water mark (rock oysters) would produce drift oysters if placed on beds on which drift oysters once throve in abundance. Dr. Cox maintains, however, that these two kinds of oysters, the rock oysters and the drift oysters, are quite different, and, as it will be seen, believes that they require different food. It can be well understood from this, then, that rock oysters will fail to grow on drift-oyster beds. As to the mud oyster, he thinks very highly of it, and regrets that it has been so ignored by our oyster culturists. He is quite sure that if our mud oyster were cultivated