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

10,000,000 oysters. In the year 1887, the area under cultivation in the same bay amounted to 15,000 acres, and produced 300,000,000 oysters. In addition to this, a still later report attributes the present flourishing condition of this industry "to the steps primarily initiated by the Government, and to the necessity of upholding this success by continuing the same system of administrative supervision, together with the practical illustration in the Government model PARCS of the most perfected methods of oyster culture, for the benefit of private cultivators." And lastly, if we require further evidence in support of the necessity for ostreiculture, we have only to turn to America. A falling off in the supply led to an inquiry into the cause by the United States Fish Commission. Professor Goode, in his review of the work accomplished by this body, writes, INTER ALIA:--"The important distinction between the extermination of a species and the destruction of a fishery should be noted. In the case of fixed animals like the sponge, the mussel, and the oyster, the colonies or beds may be practically exterminated, exactly as a forest may be cut down. The preservation of the oyster beds is a matter of vital importance to the United States, for oyster fishing unsupported by oyster culture will, within a short period, destroy the employment of tens of thousands, and the cheap and favourite food of tens of millions." "Something," the professor proceeds to say, "may be effected by laws which allow each oyster bed to rest for a period of years after each season of fishing upon it. It is the general belief, however, that shell-fish beds must be cultivated as carefully as garden beds, and that this can only be done by leasing them to individuals. It is probable that the present unregulated methods will prevail until the dredging of the natural beds ceases to be remunerative, and that the oyster industry will then be transferred from the improvident fisherman to the care-taking oyster-culturists." We are thus led to the inevitable conclusion that if our Australian oyster fisheries are to be re-created, it will