4 Transactions of the ISociety. 



Domingo/ (See Appendix A.) He was sent to France to be 

 educated, and so escaped the massacre by which his parents and 

 sixteen brothers and sisters perished in the insurrection of the 

 slaves, and at the age of fifteen he became assistant in surgery on 

 board the ' Ariel ' and the ' Eeflechie ' in the French navy, and 

 later we find him working as a naval surgeon attached to the port 

 of Brest, and the naval hospitals of Lorieut and Paimboeuf. As 

 surgeon-major of the French Expeditionary Force to Ireland in 

 1798 he was attached to the hospitals for French prisoners in 

 this country, and on his return in 1799 he married, at Paimboeuf, 

 Marie-Anne Pipat, the mother of Alcide d'Orbigny, residing 

 successively at Coueron (Loire Inf) and at ISToirmoutier (La 

 Vendee). We have good reason to spare a little time to record 

 the result of our researches into the life of Charles d'Orbigny, 

 for it is to him that the world owes the foundation of our study. 

 In 1815 he removed his family and practice to Esnandes, a little 

 village on the Anse de I'Aiguillon, 13 kil. north of La Kochelle, 

 near the Pointe S. Clement.^ 



Esnandes is a very remarkable village, consisting of hardly 

 more than a street running up from the Anse de I'Aiguillon, an 

 immense shallow-water bay, from which, at low water, the sea 

 recedes for miles. The local industry is the cultivation of mussels, 

 which are grown on curious " parks " or traps, formed of faggot 

 hurdles planted in the soft mud in the form of triangles pointing 

 out to sea, with a small opening at the apex, across which nets are 

 drawn as the tide recedes (Plate II). These " bouchots," as they 

 are locally called, become thickly covered with mussels, and the 

 " boucholeurs " go out at low tide across the mud in little punts, 

 called " aeons," 2 or 3 m. in length and only 50 cm. broad, which 

 they propel by kneeling in the " aeon " on one knee, whilst 

 they propel it with the other leg cased in a long boot which serves 

 as oar, anchor, and rudder (Plate III). The spectacle of hundreds 

 of these queer craft scurrying home across the mud at the turn 

 of the tide (which comes up like a mill-race) is a most unforgettable 

 sight.^ 



The elder d'Orbigny wrote a pamphlet upon this industry of 



1 The published biographies state that he was born at St. Malo (He et 

 Vilaine), an error gathered from an official document in which the writer, being 

 unaware of the existence of Port Malo, St. Domingo, imagined that he was 

 correcting an error in inserting St. Malo (He et Vilaine). 



- His family consisted at this time of five sons and one daughter — his eldest 

 child — MUe. Estelle Marie d'Orbigny, born in 1800, who died at La Rochelle in 

 1893 (XXII., p. 2 ; XXIV., p. 355). See Appendix A. 



3 XXIV., p. 355. See also the " Guide Joanne " for La Rochelle (1914 ed., 

 p. 27) and the local " Guide " published by the " Syndicat d'Initiative de La 

 Rochelle " (1913-14, p. 58). The immediate market or centre of distribution is 

 Bordeaux. D'Orbigny tells us that the mussels being thus kept, "as one might 

 say in a state of domesticity, they acquire a more delicate flavour than the ' wild ' 

 variety " (XL, p. 89). 



