298 THE SEAS 



separate the spat. The next stage in development was 

 reached when the tiles began to be coated with substances 

 which could later be flaked off without damaging the tile 

 and a number of attempts were made before the perfect 

 method was found by an Arcachon mason named Michelet. 

 This method, discovered in 1865 and now universally 

 adopted, consists in coating the tiles with a mixture con- 

 taining definite proportions of lime and sand. 



Coste did not live to see the success of the industry he 

 had founded, he died neglected and in poverty, but 

 Michelet, the practical man, lived to turn Coste's dreams 

 into the routine methods of a great industry. The spat 

 collected on the collectors after it had grown to suitable 

 size, was detached by flaking off the lime beneath it ; the 

 tiny oysters so obtained — far too small to be exposed on 

 the beds — were placed in " ambulances " devised by 

 Michelet. These are shallow boxes on short legs and 

 covered over with wire netting above and below, in which 

 the young oysters remain until they reach a size when they 

 can safely be laid on the open beds. 



To-day the Bay of Arcachon is the greatest centre of 

 oyster rearing in the world, four to five hundred million 

 oysters being exported every year. The Bay is almost 

 land-locked with only a small opening to the sea, and, 

 while at high tide the sea covers some 37,000 acres, at low 

 tide great stretches of sand and mud are exposed, more 

 than half the area of the Bay being uncovered at spring 

 tides. Almost the whole of this exposed region between 

 tide marks is covered with oyster parks such as those 

 shown in Plate 106, each of which is surrounded on its 

 outer side by a palisade of small twigs which serve to 

 protect the oysters within from the attacks of marauding 

 fish and which are the only indication of the presence of 

 the parks when the tide is full. Within the parks the 



