49 8 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



" Our French friends . . . rowed to a flat-bottomed 

 sailer, which took us ... to the flats, midway between 

 Arcachon and the opposite shore. 



" How is it that there is such a hedge of tufted saplings 

 growing along the edges of the ' terres emergentes,' or 

 bare flats, to which we are now quite close ? There seems 

 to be in some parts quite a thick plantation of them. 



"Yes, . . our protection against whelks, . . star- 

 fish, and other things that are horrors to the youthful 

 oyster." 



"The stakes do something to keep out these 

 marauders and the dreaded dog-fish, which is particularly 

 fond of such rich feeding grounds. These little sharks, if 

 they do get through the palisades, are frightened by the 

 waving crowns left on the stakes, and puzzled, turn and 

 turn again, and then it is too late, for they are enclosed, 

 and the visit of the keepers soon shows them that they 

 have got ' into the wrong box.' 



" Our friend . . jumped out into the 

 shallow water, (and) hauled us past the palisades of sap- 

 lings, all of which he had caused to be planted along the 

 outside of his preserves, and we found ourselves alongside 

 of lines of stakes driven down into the sand, and upholding, 

 at a distance of two feet from the bottom, rows of square 

 sieves. These sieves were double, the top one in each 

 case shutting down on the lower, so as to make a box. In 

 these boxes, protected behind their gratings like the ladies 

 in the House of Commons, reposed the young oysters, 

 listening in security to the debates of the wind and the 

 waves. The stakes held their prisoners firm, and nothing 

 could touch them in these grated asylums, where they were 

 safe from weather, and the wickedness of marine monsters 

 who might love them only for their flesh. 



