524 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



rough at Granville that, though there are in the neighbour- 

 hood inexhaustible centres of reproduction, it would be 

 very difficult to fix collecting apparatus on the shore. 



REGNEVILLE. 



Though at no great distance from Granville, the station 

 of Regneville is very favourable to the rearing of the oyster. 



It is to be remarked that the circumstances of position 

 are different. Near the head of the angle formed by the 

 coasts of Normandy and Brittany, there opens up an im- 

 mense haven which begins at Point Agou and stretches 

 along the beach, where Regneville has been built. The 

 rising sea covers it at every tide. The Sienne, a little 

 river of fresh water, taking its rise at La Baleine, falls into 

 this bay, and mingles its waters with the sea, the saltness 

 of which it tempers, and gives it that quality so prized and 

 sought for by ostriculturists which I have already noticed 

 in speaking of Courseulles. 



It is just below the mouth of the Sienne that the ostri- 

 cultural establishment founded by Madame Sarah Felix, of 

 which I am going to give a short description, is situated. 



I shall pass by with slight remark some ancient pares, 

 unworked from the time that the fishermen have taken the 

 product of their fishery elsewhere, as well as some still 

 older depots now abolished, and formerly known by the 

 name of the pares by the Passevin brook. These depots, 

 carried on in the style of those at Courseulles, had no object 

 but that of giving shelter for a longer or shorter time to 

 oysters gathered by the fishermen of the place, who dis- 

 posed of them to the owners of these ponds. The depots 

 were fed by an underground canal communicating with the 

 sea, and supplying water at high spring tides only. 



