A large oyster-farm requires a great deal of careful attention, and several people are necessary to keep it in order. If the farm be planted in a bay where the water is very shallow, there is great danger of the stock suffering from frost; and again, if the brood be laid down in very deep water, the oysters do not fatten or grow rapidly enough for profit. In dredging, the whole of the oysters, as they are hauled on board, should be carefully examined and picked; all below a certain size ought to be returned to the water till their beards have grown large enough. In winter, if the beds be in shallow water, the tender brood must be placed in a pit for protection from the frost; which of course takes up a great deal of time. Dead oysters ought to be carefully removed from the beds. The proprietors of private “layings” are generally careful on this point, and put themselves to great trouble every spring to lift or overhaul all their stock in order to remove the dead or diseased. Mussels must be carefully rooted out from the beds; otherwise they would in a short time render them valueless. The layings for example, of Mr. David Plunkett, in Killery Bay, for which he had a licence from the Irish Board of Fisheries, were overrun by mussels, and so rendered almost valueless. The weeding and tending of an oyster-bed requires, therefore, much labour, and involves either a partnership of several people—which is usual enough, as at Whitstable—or at least the employment of several dredgermen and labourers. But, for all that, an oyster-farm may be made a most lucrative concern. As a guide to the working of a very large oyster-farm—say a concern of £70,000 a year or thereabout—I shall give immediately some data of the Whitstable Free Dredgers’ Company; but I wish first to say that the organisation which is constantly at work for supplying the great metropolis with oysters is more perfect than can be said of any other branch of the fish trade. In oyster-culture we approach in some degree to the French, although we do not, as they do, except as regards the new company, begin at the beginning and plant the seed. All that we have yet achieved is the art of nursing the young “brood,” and of dividing and keeping separate the different kinds of oysters. This is done in parks or farms on various portions of the coasts of Kent and Essex, and the whole process, from beginning to end, may be viewed at Whitstable, where there is a large oyster-ground and a fine fleet of boats kept for the purpose of dredging and planting. I have already stated that the Whitstable oyster-beds are held as by a joint-stock company, into which, however, there is no other way of entrance than by birth, as none but the free dredgermen of the town can hold shares. When a man dies his interest in the company dies with him, but his widow—if he was a married man—obtains a pension. The sales from the public and private beds of Whitstable sometimes attain a total of £200,000 per annum.