Note 10 — Chapter VII · AUSTRALIA; NEW ZEALAND; CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

It would appear that some changes are now in progress in Ralph Bay, for I was assured by an intelligent farmer, that oysters were formerly abundant in it, but that about the year 1834 they had, without any apparent cause, disappeared. In the “Transactions of the Maryland Academy” (vol. i, part i, p. 28) there is an account by Mr. Ducatel of vast beds of oysters and clams having been destroyed by the gradual filling up of the shallow lagoons and channels, on the shores of the southern United States. At Chiloe, in South America, I heard of a similar loss, sustained by the inhabitants, in the disappearance from one part of the coast of an edible species of Ascidia.