74 
in special reservoirs in which they are placed for a time 
before being sold—one cultivator sends 150,000 kilo- 
grammes annually to market. 
Le Croisic is also a centre for the Sardine fishery and 
for the capture of lobsters and ‘‘langousts”’ (Palinwrus 
vulgaris), but it is of still greater interest because of the 
remarkable method there pursued with great success of 
catching shrimps in traps. It was chiefly to see these 
shrimp traps and to hear about their use that I had gone 
’ to Croisic. The trap (‘‘casier’’) is a barrel-shaped structure 
about 3 feet long and formed of spars of wood covered with 
fine meshed netting and thickly tarred all over (Pl. III, fig. 
2). It has a bottom plank projecting for a few inches at each 
end so as to form shelves upon which stones are tied to 
weight the apparatus. On one side there is a little wooden 
door, tied with string, through which the hand can be 
introduced to clear out the contents. At the ends are the 
usual funnel-shaped entrances like those of lobster pots. 
Le Croisic, apart from the inland sea, is open and 
exposed to the Atlantic and there are no special conditions 
so far as I can see that are favourable to the use of the 
shrimp trap. The shrimpers are 60 to 70 smallish, open, 
one-masted boats, and each takes out 20, 25 or 30 traps. The 
traps are set in the open sea and are used chiefly in winter. 
These boats do not use the traps alone, but also fish at the 
same time with a small fish trawl. They go to sea and 
set the traps, which they leave down all night, then they 
go trawling and pick up the traps on the way back in the 
morning. I gathered from conversation with some of the 
men that the traps are sometimes rather uncertain in 
their results, on some nights catching great numbers of 
shrimps and on others very few. One man told me that 
he did not feel sure that the traps were better than a 
shrimp trawl would be for catching shrimps, but that the | 
