128 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



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 " {Palinurus 

 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 ("easier ") 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 (PI. Ill, 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 



