Rondeletius also speaks of a fisherman who understood the art of oyster culture.
The Neapolitan Lake Fusaro—the terrible Acheron of the poets—is a great oyster-park, in which Art is made effectually to aid Nature in the multiplication of its products. This famous oyster-bank, which is represented in Pl. XIII., lies in the neighbourhood of Baia and Cumæ. It forms one of the most interesting spots in that beautiful bay. In the month of February, 1865, M. Figuier tells us he traversed its celebrated coast, seated himself on the banks of the historical lake, and tasted the produce of this curious manufacture of living beings, whose origin dates from the Roman period.
Lake Fusaro was in ancient times a place of evil report: Virgil immortalized it as the mythological Acheron; but its landscape had nothing of the sadness and desolation which accords with the sojourn of the dead. It is a salt pond, shaded with a girdle of magnificent trees. It is about a league in circumference, and about a fathom in depth at its deepest part; its bottom is muddy and black, like the rest of this volcanic region.
It will be understood, from what has been said, that the chief obstacle to the reproduction of oysters is the absence of any solid body to which the young spawn can attach itself, and the means of shelter from animals which prey upon them. The fishermen living on the shores of Lake Fusaro have long realized this, and provided against it by warehousing, as it were, in the lake near the sea, the oysters ready to discharge their spawn, while retaining the young generations captive in the protected basins, where they are sheltered from various causes of destruction to which oysters are exposed in the open sea.
Plate XIII.—General View of the Oyster Parks on Lake Fusaro.
Upon the bottom of the lake, and on its circumference, the proprietors of Fusaro have constructed hillocks here and there, with stones heaped up, artificial rocks, raised sufficiently to shelter the depôts from mud and slime. Upon these rocks they deposit the young oysters gathered in the Gulf of Tarentum. Each of these rock-works is surrounded by a girdle of piles, driven close to each other, and raised a little above the surface of the water, as represented in Fig. 173. Other piles are distributed in long lines, and bound to each other by a cord, from which are suspended fagots of young wood. In the spawning season the oysters which have been deposited on the artificial rocks discharge the myriads of young fry which have been nurtured in the folds of their mantles. The fagots suspended from the piles arrest the germ before it is driven away by the waves, much as a swan attaches itself to the first shrub which comes in the way. By these precautions the riverains of Fusaro have provided for the preservation of the young fry, besides removing many of the natural enemies of the young oyster.
Fig. 173. Artificial Oyster-bank in Lake Fusaro.
In other places the piles are distributed in long lines and bound together by strong cords, from which fagots of brushwood are suspended, on which the young spawn lay hold, as in Fig. 174.