' "MUSSEL COMMERCE. 28V 



unpalatable, although there are still many branches of them 

 fit for the market. It is in the months between July and 

 January that the great harvest goes on, and the chief money- 

 business is done. If the mussels are to be sent to a distance, 

 they are separated and cleared from all kinds of dirt, packed 

 in hampers and bags, and sent away on the backs of horses or 

 in carts ; while those required for more local consumption are 

 kept in pits dug at the bottom of the cliff, and within the 

 enclosure where the men keep the trousseau of the bouchots. 

 There are no less than a hundred and forty horses and about a 

 hundred carts engaged in the trade; and the mussels are 

 distributed within a radius of about a himdred miles of Esnandes, 

 more than thirty thousand journeys being made in the service. 

 In addition to this land-carrying, forty or fifty barques are. in 

 the habit of visiting the port, to bear away the mussels to still 

 greater distances, making in all about seven hundred and fifty 

 voyages per annum. 



Does the mussel-fa,rm payl will, of course, be asked by 

 practical people. Yes, it pays. I have obtained the foUowing 

 figures to show that mussel-farming pays very weU, not to speak 

 of what is obtained by the round and flat fish which are daily 

 captured through the peculiar construction of the bouchots. 

 Every bouchot wiU jrield a load of mussels for each mfetre of its 

 length ; and this load is of the value of six francs ; and the 

 whole farm at Esnandes is said to yield an annual revenue of 

 about a million and a quarter of francs, or, to speak roundly, 

 upwards of fifty-two thousand pounds per annum ; and when it 

 is taken into account that this large sum of money is, as nearly 

 as possible, a gift from nature to the inhabitants, as there is no 

 rent to pay for the farm, no seed — as is the case at the' 

 Whitstable oyster-farm — to provide, no manure to buy — only 

 the labour necessary for cultivation to be given, British fisher- 

 men will easily comprehend the advantages to be derived from 

 mussel-farming. 



[Since my visit to Esnandes several changes have heen made at the 

 mussel-farm — more especially in the disposition of the Souchots — but there 

 is no difference in the mode of culture.] 



