850 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [26] 
‘* These animals, which seem to multiply during the whole of the warm 
season, generally quit our marshes towards the end of October; they. 
go all at once, in one night, and spread over the high seas, and not one 
can be found where a few days before they were innumerable.” 
Walton realized from his first structure all the suecess which his ex- 
perience with the isolated pickets in the first instance had led him to 
hope for, but still he did not entirely give up for this the use of the 
isolated stakes. He drove a considerable number on the sea-shore, 
using them afterwards to fill up the gaps in the wattle fence which the 
young of the year did not fill up, and in the succeeding spring the fine 
mussels which he raised in these artificial beds were preferred to all 
others. His neighbors, struck with the advantages he had obtained 
through his industry, followed his example with such eagerness that 
soon the whole marsh was covered with bouchots, and at the time these 
lines are being written a forest of about 250,000 stakes is permanently 
in use to support 125,000 fascines bending every year under the weight 
of a crop which a whole fleet of vessels of the line could not carry. 
These stakes are trunks of ‘trees, measuring 12 feet in height and 6 
inches in thickness, which are driven down into the mud half their 
length, thus leaving 6 feet above the surface; planted about 40 or 50 
centimeters apart, they are arranged in double rows, according to 
Walton’s plan, and extend some 200 to 250 meters, each pair forming a 
V, with the point towards the sea. The upper ends of the stakes, that 
is, the ends out of the mud, are interlaced with wicker-work formed 
from the branches of the obier, which are not less than 25 to 30 feet long, 
and by twisting them the long colonnades which support them are con- 
verted into solid stockades, covered like basket-work. But the wicker- 
work does not extend entirely to the bottom, stopping a few centimeters 
above its level, so that the water may flow freely between, both at the 
rising and ebbing of the tide. Its lower side does not touch the mud, 
and the whole weight rests on the poles; they, of course, must be placed 
sufficiently near each other to offer a great number of points of contact, 
for without this precaution the wicker-work, weighted by the mussels, 
would bend in the long spaces between the supports so as to touch the 
bottom and promote the accumulation of soil by opposing an obstacle 
to the mud which the tide carries, or, being broken by it, the expenses 
of cultivation would be so increased as to ruin the business. A distance 
of two feet is sufficient; a distance of a meter would be disastrous. 
The question, therefore, is whether narrower intervals will not cause a 
more rapid filling of the Bay of Aiguillon, and whether, in favoring the 
culture of mollusks, the interests of navigation, of which the minister of 
marine ought to be the vigilant protector, may not be put in jeopardy. 
A eareful exploration of the Bay of Aiguillon during an ebbing spring- 
tide completely reassured me on this point; I discovered that the ebb- 
ing sea encountered just as much opposition from the stakes which 
hold up the wings of the douchots. Striking against them, the waves 
