852 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [28] 
of exceedingly delicate animals, would too often be left exposed, and 
could not well resist the prolonged action of the sun or of extreme 
cold. It is therefore here that all the seed is allowed to grow and accu- 
mulate which is intended afterwards, by means of transplanting and 
rearranging, to replenish the palisades which are empty or too scantily 
furnished, and the series which the sea uncovers very often; for the in- 
habitants of the country use agricultural expressions to designate the 
different operations of their industry they say sowing, planting, trans- 
planting, weeding, pruning, and harvesting the mussels. 
Towards the mouth of April, this seed, fixed in February and March 
to the solitary lower bouchots (bouchots daval), hardly equals in size a 
grain of flax, and is then known under the name of naissain; by the 
month of May it has grown as large as a pea, and by July attained the 
size of a bean, and is then called renouvelain; at this time the trans- 
planting oceurs. 
When the month of July has arrived, and the spat has acquired, in 
its cradle, the size of the seed-mussel, it is considered sufficiently devel- 
oped to undergo the change and to acclimate itself to a spot some: 
what less favorable, where, before this period of its age, it would have 
suffered. The fishermen push their boats out to the points in the marsh 
where the spiles are filled with this seed. 
They detach by scraping, with the aid of a hook fastened in a handle, 
as many shells as they will be able to transplant at low water, heaping 
up these shells in baskets, and directing their canoes towards the near- 
est palisades, the bastard weirs (bouchots batards), which are uncovered. 
after ordinary high tides, and there begin the work of stocking (la bd- 
tisse). 
Then, taking each parcel separately, they inclose it in a bag of old 
netting; then they place all these colonies among the branches, one 
cluster after the other, the individuals of which, bound together by 
their byssus, form distinct families; filling all the interstices with this 
stock (bdtisse), as a mason would do who inserts plaster to convert | 
open stone-work into a wall; with this difference, however, that here 
one must always place the families so far apart that the increase of one 
community shall not obstruct that of its neighbors. The bag in which 
they were wrapped soon decays, and nothing prevents these isolated 
colonies from extending their limits by the development of individual 
members. They grow up in this new abode and finally touch one an- 
other; so that these immense palisades, when these clusters completely 
cover them, resemble the sides of a wall blackened by a fire. 
When this state of things has arrived, and the mussels are so large 
as to touch each other, their resistance to the action of external con- 
ditions is much stronger than when in their young state. They may be 
thinned out, when too thick, to make room for younger generations, and 
to transfer those which are detached from the bastard bouchots, which, as 
I have already said, are not uncovered during ordinary tides, to the 
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