of that month. Last year liming operations were in full 

 swing up to the second week in July and I had a some- 

 what unlooked for opportunity of seeing every process 

 connected with the preparing of collectors, the liming and 

 stacking of the tiles, their transport in barges, often 

 towed by motor boats, to the parks and the placing and 

 filling of the collector frames along the margins of the 

 channels. The methods of protecting the young and the 

 injured till the shell thickens sufficiently to permit them 

 to be scattered over the surface of the " claires," the 

 various ingenious plans devised to protect the older 

 oysters from their many enemies, the raking and spread- 

 ing and general routine work of an oyster farm, and even 

 the methods employed to prepare and fit new sections of 

 the sea bottom for oyster-culture were all studied in 

 operation ; of the details of the more important I ob- 

 tained permanent records in the form of photographs, 

 some of which are used in the illustration of the 

 descriptive portion of the present report. 



Arcachon I confess proved a revelation to me. Few, 

 I think, appreciate what strides this small Girondin 

 fishing district has made in the past few years ; few will 

 realize that it is now the second fishing port in France 

 as well as far ahead of all others in oyster-farming. It 

 owned in 1909, 43 steam fishing vessels mostly trawlers 

 (among them are some larger than any British-owned) 

 and has over 200 motor fishing boats engaged in the 

 sardine fishery. It may also be said to have become the 

 present-day centre of the French sardine cannino- 

 industry which is rapidly transferring its factories to this 

 district ; some dozen factories have been erected durino- 

 the last two years alone. Of small boats registered at 

 Arcachon, of which the majority are employed in fishino- 

 and in oyster-culture, the numbers run well above 9,000. 

 Except in respect of the trawling concerns and sardine 

 factories the local marine industries are conducted on the 

 family basis or upon the share system ; a feeling of quiet 

 prosperity is the dominant note in the villages and 

 hamlets. Comfortable cottages usually with a patch of 



