The oysters mature in from four to six years so that ordinarily a bank may be fished once in that period, but it sometimes happens that the young oysters are swept away by violent storms or crowded out by natural enemies. In 1901 the Ceylon banks were found to be in a bad way, there were plenty of young oysters but none full-grown. The government officers could not account for the condition, and in response to a report of the facts the government sent Prof. W. A. Herdman to Ceylon in 1902. He examined the whole of the bottom of the Gulf of Manaar and discovered banks on which were full-grown oysters, so that a fishing was fixed for the 23rd of February 1903. Weather prevented commencement until the second of March, when fishing began and lasted forty-two working days until April the fourteenth. The fishings take place in March and April because the sea is usually calm at that period. The banks lie in five to ten fathoms over a shallow area nearly fifty miles long by twenty miles broad, opposite Aripo. A steep declivity on the western edge gives the sea a depth of one hundred fathoms in a few miles. In the centre of the southern part of the Gulf of Manaar, west of the Chilaw pearl-banks, the sea is one to two thousand fathoms deep. Of all the paars, or oyster-beds (paar means rock or hard bottom) the Periya paar is the largest. It is about eleven nautical miles long and from one to two miles broad. Situated in about five to ten fathoms close to the top of the western slope of the shallows, and running north and south about twenty miles from land, it is exposed to the southwest monsoon which runs up toward the Bay of Bengal for about six months of the year. The natives call this the mother-paar, believing that the young oysters are carried from it to the other paars, which are thus stocked at its expense. Between 1880 and 1902 twenty-one examinations showed that the Periya paar had been naturally stocked eleven times with enormous quantities of young oysters, which as regularly disappeared before they were old enough to yield a fishing. The most reliable paars are in the Cheval district and it is probable that the government, acting on the suggestion of Prof. Herdman, will hereafter dredge the breeding Periya paar of its young oysters and plant them where they will be able to mature. It is estimated that many millions of millions of oysters have been lost from this paar during the last twenty-five years. A fishing is not only a matter of commercial importance, but of wide-spread interest among the natives of Ceylon and India. The romance of the situation, the hope of gain, the great gathering of people from many and far-off countries, the opportunities for barter, the possibilities of securing priceless gems for little, and for making money quickly, all appeal to the oriental mind.