er-time, many English people flocking
thither attracted by the shelter and scent of the fir trees; but
Arcachon itself--the long unlovely street--is in the winter months
steeped in the depths of desolation. The shops are deserted, the
pill-boxes have their lids put on, and everywhere forlorn signs hang
forth announcing that here is a _maison_ or an _appartement a louer_.

All through the winter months, shut up between sea and sand, Arcachon
is A Town to Let.

Deprived in the winter months of the flock of holiday makers, Arcachon
makes money in quite another way. Just as suddenly as it bloomed forth
a fashionable watering-place, it has grown into an oyster park of
world-wide renown. Last year the Arcachon oyster beds produced not
less than three hundred million oysters, the cultivators taking in
round figures a million francs. The oysters are distributed through
various markets, but the greatest customer is London, whither there
come every year fifty millions of the dainty bivalve.

"And what do they call your oysters in London?" I asked M. Faure, the
energetic gentleman who has established this new trade between the
Gironde and the Thames.

"They call them 'Natives'," he said, with a sly twinkle.

The Arcachon oyster, if properly packed, can live eight days out of the
water, a period more than sufficient to allow for its transit by the
weekly steamers that trade between Bordeaux and London. A vast quantity
go to Marenne in the Charente lnferieure, where they fatten more
successfully than in the salt lake, and acquire that green colour which
makes them so much esteemed and so costly in the restaurants at Paris.

Oysters have, probably since the time of the Deluge, congregated in the
Basin d'Arcachon; but it is only within the last thirty years the
industry has been developed and placed on a footing that made possible
the growth of today. Up to the year 1860 oysters were left to their own
sweet will in the matter of creating a bed. When they settled upon a
place it was diligently cultivated, but the lead was absolutely left to
the oyster. Dr. Lalanne, in the intervals of a large medical practice at
La Teste, a little place on the margin of the Basin, observed that
oysters were often found attached to a piece of a wreck floating in the
middle of the water far remote from the beds.

This led him to study more closely the reproductive habits of the
oyster. He discovered that the eggs after incubation remained suspende