896 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [12] 
cale successfully used the plank collector in the summer of 1859. At 
the close of the same year the parkers of Arcachon also tried it, hav- 
ing learned through the authorities of the success obtained by its use 
at the former place. In several other localities private oyster breeders, 
hearing of the experiments made by the chief of the marine service at 
Saint-Servan, wrote to him direct, in order to obtain information regard- 
ing his method of work. In the great experiment at Saint-Brieuc bun- 
dles of fagots and shells alone were used, as the plank collectors would 
not have withstood the violence of the sea in a position so exposed. 
Stones, slates, and bricks were employed in the more quiet waters. All 
of these collecting implements are still in use, and are more or less suc- 
cessful according to the locality; but with regard to this there is no 
uniform rule. At Arcachon, wooden boxes or hives, 4 meters square, and 
filled with fagots, were employed in the beginning. These were the in- 
vention of Messrs? Lalesque and Lalanne, two promoters of oyster culture 
in that district; but this system was soon abandoned as being of little 
avail. 
The use of tiles—It was at Arcachon, and in the parks of Régneville, 
belonging to Mrs. Sarah Félix, that the use of tiles, which has since be- 
come very general, was first inaugurated. The tiles used as collectors 
are concave in shape, being the same as those which are placed upon 
the tops of walls to protect them from the rain. They were arranged 
in the shape of a roof at a short distance above the bottom, being held 
up by means of stakes. They answered well, but presented a serious in- 
convenience at the outset; the young oysters attached themselves so 
firmly to them that they could not be removed, without breaking either 
the collector or the shell. 
Improved methods of preparing the tiles—Dr. Kemmerer, an oyster 
eulturist of the island of Ré, found means to obviate this difficulty by 
coating the tiles with a layer of hydraulic cement mixed with water and 
defribrinated blood. The young oysters adhering to this friable outer 
coating could be easily removed from the tiles at the proper time. This 
system was greatly improved upon, or rather simplified, by the parkers 
of Arcachon; the hydraulic cement, which became very hard by contact 
with the sea-water, was replaced by a less expensive coating—consisting 
of ordinary mortar, and made by mixing two parts of sand with one part 
of an inferior quality of lime. 
Claires, or water parks.—Another improvement consisted in the es- 
tablishment of claires, which are basins of slight depth, so built and ar- 
ranged as to retain the water at low tide, in order to protect the oysters 
against excessive heat and cold during the period of development. They 
are in imitation of the method of cultivation that has been used at Mar- 
ennes and in the Seudre since very early times. 
“Ambulances,” or preservative boxes.—Finally, as the operation of re- 
moving the oysters from their point of adhesion often results in injury 
to their shell, notwithstanding all the precautions taken, and as their 
