One or two specimens of his elucidations of Shakspeare are all that we can spare room for. "To say that Macbeth is ambition, is saying nothing. Macbeth is hunger. What hunger? The hunger of the monster always possible in man. There are souls which have teeth. Do not awake this hunger." If Macbeth is Hunger, Othello, we learn is, Night. "Immense fatale figure. La nuit est amoureuse du jour. La noirceur aime l'aurore. L'Africain adore la blanche." Beside this Night stands Iago, who is Evil. "Night is but the night of the world; evil is the night of the soul. What obscurity there is in perfidy and falsehood !" What follows is untranslatable: "Quiconque a coudoyé l'imposture et le parjure le sait on est à tâtons dans un fourbe. Versez l'hypocrisie sur le point du jour vous éteindrez le soleil. C'est là, grace aux fausses religions, ce qui arrive à Dieu." French rhetoric cannot get on without "Dieu," and Victor Hugo is very French, and very rhetorical. As a final specimen consider this:

Sondez cette chose profonde, Othello c'est la nuit. Et étant la nuit, et voulant tuer, qu'est-ce qu'il prend pour tuer? le poison? la massue? la hache? le couteau ? Non, l'oreiller. Tuer, c'est endormir. Shakspeare lui-même ne s'est peut-être pas rendu compte de ceci.

The last touch is exquisite.

In only one sense can this extraordinary book be taken as an indication of French opinion, namely, as showing the hyperbolical admiration which an eminent French poet can express for a dramatist once deemed unworthy of the epithets "genius," and "glory." The most illustrious of living dramatists in France proclaims Shakspeare the greatest of all dramatists. Such has been the change from Voltaire to Victor Hugo !

G. H. L.

Oyster Farming.

THE most noteworthy circumstance connected with the art of fish culture is the attention which is at present bestowed on oyster-breeding on the foreshores of France. On many parts of the coast, and particularly at the Ile de Ré, near la Rochelle, thousands of oyster farms have recently started into existence, affording remunerative employment to a large population, who thus provide, and at a comparatively cheap rate, one of the most esteemed luxuries of the table.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that about fifteen years ago there was scarcely an oyster of native growth in France; the beds had become so exhausted from over-dredging as to be unproductive, and the people were consequently in despair at the loss of this favourite adjunct of their banquets, and had to resort to other countries for such small supplies as they could obtain. As an illustration of the over-dredging that had prevailed, it may be stated that oyster farms which formerly employed fourteen hundred men, with two hundred boats, and yielded an annual revenue of 400,000 francs, had become so reduced as to require only one hundred men and twenty boats. Places where at one time there had been as many as fifteen banks and great prosperity among the fisher class, at the period we allude to had become almost oysterless. St. Brieuc, Rochelle, Marennes, Rochefort, &c., had all suffered so much that those interested in the fisheries were no longer able to stock their beds, thus proving that notwithstanding the enormous fecundity of these sea animals, it is quite possible to overfish them. It was under these circumstances that M. Coste instituted that plan of oyster culture which has been so much noticed of late in the scientific journals. At the instigation of the French Government, the professor made a voyage of exploration round the coasts of France and Italy, in order to inquire into the condition of the sea fisheries which were, it was thought, in a declining condition, and study how they could be aided by artificial means, as the fresh-water fisheries had already been aided through the re-discovery, by Joseph Renny, of the long-forgotten art of pisciculture.

We presume, indeed we know, that it is to the ancient industry carried en in the lake of Fusaro, a piece of water in the bay of Naples, that M. Coste was indebted for his inspiration in the matter of oyster culture, for the art of cultivating this mollusc is still carried on in that classic locality. The breeding of oysters was a business pursued with great assiduity during what may, without impropriety, be called the gastronomic age of Italy-the period when Lucullus kept a stock of fish valued

at fifty thousand pounds sterling, and Sergius Orata invented the art of oyster culture. There is not a great deal known about this ancient gentleman, except that it is pretty certain he was an epicure of most refined taste: the "master of luxury" he was called. While standing his trial for using the public waters of. Lake Lucrinus for his own private uses, his advocate Lucinus Crassus said that the revenue officer who prosecuted Orata was mistaken if he thought that gentleman would dispense with his oysters, even if he was driven from the Lake of Lucrinus; for rather than not enjoy his accustomed luxury, he would grow them on the tops of his houses!

Lake Fusaro, interesting as the first seat of oyster culture, is the Acheron of Virgil. It is a black volcanic-looking pool of water, about a league in circumference, which lies between the site of the Lucrine lake used by Orata and the ruins of the town of Cumæ, and is still extant, being even now, as we have said, devoted to the highly profitable art of oyster farming, and yielding (by report) from this source an annual revenue of about twelve hundred pounds. This classic sheet of water was at one time surrounded by the villas of wealthy Romans, who frequented the place for the joint benefit of the sea-water baths and the shell-fish commissariat which had been established in the two lakes (Avernus and Lucrine). The mode of oyster-breeding at this place, then, as now, was to erect artificial pyramids of stones in the water, surrounded by stakes of wood in order to intercept the spawn, the oysters being laid down on the stones. Faggots of branches were also used for collecting the spawn, which requires, within twenty-four hours of its emission, to secure a speedy holding-on-place, or be lost for ever. The plan of the Fusaro oyster-breeders struck M. Coste as being eminently practical and suitable for imitation. He had one of the stakes pulled up, and was gratified to find it covered with oysters of all ages and sizes.

It is not our purpose in the present paper to enter into the minutiae of oyster life; indeed, there have been so many controversies on the natural history of this animal, as to render it impossible to narrate in the brief space of a popular Magazine a tenth part of what is known of the life and habits of the "breedy creature." Every stage of its growth has been made the stand-point for a wrangle of some kind. It has been disputed whether or not oysters are male and female, like other animals; it has been made a matter of controversy on which of its shells it rests, the concave or the flat one; whether it emits a sound, whether it has any mode of progressing from place to place, how long it is of growing, and when it becomes reproductive. We wish, however, to say this much about the oyster's natural history, namely, that the immense fecundity of the animal is largely detracted from by bad breeding seasons, for unless the spawning season be mild and warm, there is but a very partial fall of spat, and a consequent scarcity of brood. And even if one be the proprietor of a large bed of oysters, there is no security for the spawn which is emitted from the oysters of that bed falling upon it, or within the

bounds of one's own property even, for it is often enough the case that the spawn falls at a considerable distance from the place where it has been emitted. Thus, the spawn from the Whitstable and Faversham Oyster Company's beds-and these contain millions of oysters-falls usually enough on a large piece of ground between Whitstable and the Isle of Thanet, formerly common property, but lately given by Act of Parliament to a company recently formed for the breeding of oysters. The saving of the spawn cannot be effected unless it fall on proper ground, and ground with a shelly bottom is best. The infant animal is sure to perish if it fall among mud or upon sand; it must obtain a holding-on-place as the first condition of its own existence. The spawn of the oyster is well matured before it leaves the protection of the parental shell, and, by the aid of the microscope, the young animal can be seen with its shells perfect, and its holding-on apparatus, which is also a kind of swimming-pad, ready to clutch the first coigne of vantage that the current may carry it against. The parent oyster goes on "brewing" its spawn for some time; and it is supposed that the spawn swims about with the current for a short period before it falls, being, in the meantime, devoured by countless animals. If each oyster yields, as is thought, about a couple of millions of young, we should say that the operation of brewing, nursing, and exuding from the parental shell will occupy a considerable period— say, from two to four weeks. It is quite certain that the close time for oysters is necessary and advantageous; for we seldom find this animal, as we do the herring and other fishes, full of eggs, so that all the operations connected with its reproduction go on in the months during which there is no dredging. The time at which the oyster becomes reproductive is not known with any exactitude; but in these days of oyster farming the date may be easily fixed, and it will, no doubt, be found to vary in different localities. At some places it becomes marketable in the course of little more than two years, at other places it is three or four years before it becomes a saleable commodity; but on the average it will be quite safe to assume that at four years the oyster is both ripe for sale and reproductive of its kind.

We may just state, before going further, that the best mode of securing the spawn of the oyster has not been determined. M. Coste recommends the adoption of fascines of brushwood to be fixed over the natural oysterbeds, in order to intercept the young ones; others again, as we shall by and by see, have adopted the parks, and have successfully caught the spawn on dikes constructed for that purpose; but Dr. Kemmerer, of St. Martin's, in the Ile de Ré, has invented a tile which he covers with some kind of composition that can as occasion requires be easily peeled off, so that the crop of oysters which may be gathered upon it can be transferred from place to place with the greatest possible ease, and this plan is useful for the transference of the oyster from the collecting park to the fattening claire. The composition and the adhering oysters may all be stripped off in one piece, and the tile be again coated for future use. Hitherto these tiles have been

very successful, although it is thought, by experienced cultivators, that no bottom for oysters is so good as the natural one of "cultch," or old oyster shells; but the tile is often of service in catching the "floatsome," as dredgers call the spawn, and to secure that should be one of the first objects of the cyster farmer.

The system of cultivation that had been so long and successfully carried on at Lake Fusaro was, with one or two slight modifications, strongly recommended by the French Government to the people as being the most suitable to follow, and experiments were at once entered upon with a view to prove whether it would be as practicable to cultivate oysters among the agitated waves of the open sea as in the quiet waters of Fusaro. In order to settle this point, it was determined to renew the old oyster beds of the Bay of St. Brieuc, and immediate, almost miraculous, success was the result. The fascines laid down soon became covered with spat, and branches were speedily exhibited at Paris and other places containing thousands of young oysters. The experiments in oyster culture tried at St. Brieuc were commenced, early in the spring of 1859, on part of a space of three thousand acres. A quantity of breeding oysters, approaching to three millions, was laid down either on the old beds or on newly constructed longitudinal banks; these were sown thick on a bottom composed chiefly of immense quantities of old shells, the "middens" of Cancale in fact, where the shell accumulations had become a nuisance, so that there was a more than ordinary good chance for the spat finding at once a proper holding-on-place. Then again, over some of the new banks, fascines of boughs were sunk and chained over the beds so as to intercept any portion of the spawn that was likely upon its rising to be carried away by the force of the tide. In less than six months the success of the operations in the Bay of St. Brieuc was assured, for at the proper season a great fall of spawn had occurred, and the bottom shells were covered with the spat, while the fascines were so thickly coated with young oysters that an estimate of 20,000 for each fascine was not thought an exaggeration.

But, a year before the date of the St. Brieuc experiments, the artificial culture of the oyster had been successfully commenced on another part of the French coast, namely, at the Ile de Ré near la Rochelle, in the Bay of Biscay, which is now the capital of French oysterdom, having more parcs and claires than Marennes, Arcachon, Concarneau, Cancale, or all the rest of the coast put together, and which, before it became celebrated for its Oyster growing, was only known in common with many other places in France for its successful culture of the vine. It is curious to note the rapid growth of this industry on the Ile de Ré; it was begun so recently as 1858, and there are now, according to Mr. Ashworth, who has obligingly communicated to us his census, taken a few months ago, upwards of four thousand parks and claires upon its shores. It was inaugurated by a stonemason, having the curious name of Beef. This shrewd fellow had been thinking of oyster culture simultaneously with