ARTIFICIAL OYSTER CULTIVATION. 1175 



off the bottom so as to allow a free circulation of water to 

 go on round the box. Some proprietors place them in their 

 pares, others on the shore, as near low water-mark as 

 possible. It is considered desirable to place them in a 

 current, or as near to one as possible, as their growth is 

 much more rapid under these conditions. In fact it is 

 astonishing how quickly oysters will grow when placed in 

 favourable circumstances. The wire-covered ambulances 

 referred to above cost about twenty francs each. The 

 canvas ones probably about four shillings. 



In France, when oysters are old enough to be moved, 

 i.e. when they are about eighteen months old, they are 

 transferred from the breeding pares and laid down to 

 fatten in the "tidal* claires or crassats. And here we 

 ought to explain that the term "pare'' is more strictly 

 applied to a shore or bank where the parent oysters are laid 

 down and collectors are placed to arrest the spat. A claire, 

 on the other hand, is a tidal enclosure, provided or not 

 with sluices, where the young oysters are put to grow and 

 fatten ; and a crassat is an ebb-dry foreshore mudland, 

 corresponding to the banks of some of our creeks. Claires 

 or clears are not employed so frequently in the United 

 Kingdom as in France, their place being supplied by 

 foreshore and creek beds, the latter producing some of our 

 best native oysters. 



The oysters are moved into ambulances from the 

 pares at Arcachon in October, i.e. about fifteen months 

 after they are born. At Auray they are allowed to remain 

 till the following March or April before being taken into 

 daij-es. When the transfer takes place, they are taken off 

 the tiles by women, who can easily remove them with a 

 cultack. 



