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The Mumbles or Oystermouth fishery was apparently well known as early in 1684, when Thomas Dineley, in his account of the first Duke of Beaufort's journey through Wales, referred to Oystermouth, sayd to be the best bed of oysters in Great Britain." The glory has departed; but efforts are being made at the present time to re-establish the Mumbles industry on a firm basis, and as F. S. Wright observes in a recent paper, whereas many formerly productive banks have long since been rendered more or less barren the South Wales beds, though they have been extremely impoverished at times, have shown greater powers of recuperation, and have continued to yield oysters in greater or less abundance down to the present day." It is with a view to arousing interest in the present efforts at re- establishment that this brief account is being written. Summaries of the growth and decline of the fishery have already been given by the present writer*, in 1929, and more recently by Wrightf (in 1932). Plate 4 accompanying this article is taken from a Calotype or Talbotype paper negative (one of a series recently acquired by the National Museum of Wales) made in the year 1860, at which period the oyster fishery at Mumbles was approaching its greatest development. From the time of Dineley's reference in 1684 up till about the middle of the nineteenth century the industry appears to have been conducted mainly or entirely by means of small rowing boats. According to the statement of a witness before the Select Committee on Oyster Fisheries in 1876, there were only thirty rowing boats engaged thirty years before that time. The arrival of the first skiff was locally regarded as an affair of great importance; it was named The Seven Sisters in honour of the owner's bevy of daughters J. After the middle of the century the growth of the fishery was rapid, until early in the 'sixties there were roughly about 90 dredging boats at work, from Wales and the Sea Fisheries, published by the National Museum of Wales. t Report of Investigations into the past and present conditions of the Natural Oyster Beds of South Wales, Min. of Ag. and Fish., Fishery Investigations, Series II, Vol. XII, No. 4, 1932. So, at any rate, says the British Association Handbook to Swansea, 1880; but one remembers that the village of Seven Sisters is not so very far away.