110 Description of the Landes of Acquitania. 
nights of winter, a great quantity of wild ducks are taken, by means 
of nets from 350 to 400 feet in length, fastened to poles of from 9 
to 10 feet high, and disposed in zigzag or in numerous convolu- 
tions ; and in the sweep which the birds make in their descent, 
they are entrapped. 
Iron is not now a very lucrative branch of commerce, though ex- 
tracted in considerable quantities. In some places, some private 
founderies have been of great value. That of St. Julien, much 
worked in the time of the late emperor, and valted in 1804 at 
22,000 francs annually, is not at present worth one-third that sum. 
The bark of the cork tree, (Quercus suber,) forms another branch 
of commerce, more or less lucrative in different parts of the Landes. 
In the north the plantations are the most extensive, and there it is 
carried on with the greatest vigour. 
But it is in the numerous and extensive pignadas that the Lan- 
dais finds his principal resources. These forests extend from the 
Teste de Buch to Bayonne, upon a width of from 10 to 12 miles. 
Little pignadas are also scattered on the plains, and much attention 
is paid to their progress up the sand hills and through the vallies 
of the downs. 
Serious injury to these forests has often been sustained from 
fires. On the 23d of August 1803, (4 Thermidor, An. II.) a fire 
broke out in the part called Pinsole, communicating itself to all 
the pignadas which border the ponds of Soustons, and to those si- 
tuated on the south of that laguna, as far as Labielle, being all 
entirely destroyed. The fire broke out near Pinsole, from causes 
which were never ascertained: it was not stopped for three days 
afterwards, but the fire was not completely extinguished for two 
months afterwards. Among the downs which form part of the pa- 
rishes of Teste Gujan and the Teste de Buch, there exists an ex- 
tensive forest, totally burnt in 1716, which was very soon after- 
wards a blooming forest of young and vigorous trees,—a fact which 
appears constantly to accompany these accidents ; and indeed their 
very occurrence, in such situations, can only give us room to specu- 
late upon the intimate relation which they bear to geological 
changes yet very little understood. 
The produce of this forest is valued at 18,000 frances. The con- 
stant necessity of cleaving the trees, and of collecting the products, 
gives employment to a considerable portion of the male population, 
who, furnished with ladders and sharp axes, run about the woods 
with great activity, selecting the tree fit for cutting. A small 
piece is chipped off the base, and this is economically cut into a 
vase of very simple construction, to receive the more fluid- parts of 
the produce, and this first chip is gradually carried as near the top 
of the tree as possible, and then another is begun at an opposite 
part of the trunk. 
The process of distillation necessary to obtain the last products, 
are performed in furnaces scattered over the country, and the re- 
sult borne by oxen to its destination, The roads at the border of 
the pignadas traced by these beasts, are almost the only enes to be 
