a, right lobe of the mantle; d, rectum; g, branchiæ; h, foot;
j, posterior muscle; l, superior tube;
o, heart; p, ventricle; q, auricle; x, pericardium; b, tentacles;
d, byssus; e, gland of the byssus;
g, retractile muscle of the foot; h, valves of the mantle; i, oviduct;
j, orifice of the excretory organ; k, internal ditto.
Many of our readers may think that mussels are found on the shore in a state of nature, of good size, well flavoured, and fit for the table. Nothing of the kind! Detached from the rocks and cliffs of the sea, where it has been growing in a natural state, it is lean, small, acrid, and unwholesome food; and it is only when human industry intervenes to ameliorate this child of Nature that it becomes palatable and wholesome food. In order to trace the ameliorative process by which the coriaceous flesh of the mussel was rendered tender, fat, and even savoury, we must conduct the reader back into the middle ages.
Some time in 1236 a barque, freighted with sheep and manned by three Irishmen, came to grief upon the rocks in the creek of Aiguillon, a few miles from Rochelle. The neighbouring fishermen who came to the relief of the crew succeeded with great difficulty in saving the life of the master, a man named Walton. Exiled upon the lonely shore of the Aunis, with a few sheep saved from shipwreck, Walton at first supported himself by hunting sea-fowl, which frequented the shore and neighbouring marshes in vast flocks. He was a skilful fowler, and invented or adapted a peculiar kind of net, which he called the night net. This consisted of a net some three or four hundred yards in length by three in breadth, which he placed horizontally, like a screen, along the quiet waters of the bay, retaining it in its position by means of posts driven into the muddy bottom. In the obscurity of the night the wild-fowl, in floating along the surface of the waters, would come in contact with the net, and get themselves entangled in its meshes.
But the Bay of Aiguillon was only a vast lake of mud, in which boats moved with difficulty; and Walton, having arranged his bird-net, began to consider what kind of boat would enable him most conveniently to navigate the sea of mud. The flat-bottomed, square-sided boat, known in our rivers as a punt, and on the Norman coast as an acon, was the result. Walton's boat had a wooden frame some three yards long and one in breadth and depth, the fore part of which sloped down into the water, in the form of a prow, at a slight angle. In propelling the boat the rower, who occupied the stern of the punt, knelt on his right knee (as represented in Fig. 159), inclining forward, with one hand on each edge, and the left leg outside the boat. A vigorous push with the left foot gave the frail boat an impulse, under which it rapidly traversed the bay from one point to the other.
The mussels swarmed in the little bay; and Walton soon remarked that they attached themselves by preference to that part of the post a little above the mud, and that those so placed soon became fatter, as well as more agreeable to the taste, than those buried in the mud. He saw in this peculiarity the elements of a sort of mussel culture which might become a new branch of industry. "The practices he introduced," says M. Coste, "were so happily adapted to the requirements of the new industry, that, after six centuries, they are still the rules by which the rich patrimony he created for a numerous population is governed. He seems to have applied himself to the enterprise, conscious not only of the service he was rendering to his contemporaries, but desirous that their descendants should remember him, for in every instance he has given to the apparatus which he invented the form of his initial letter W. After due consideration, Walton began to carry out his design. He planted a long range of piles along the low marshy shore, each pair forming a letter V, the front of the letter being towards the sea, and each limb diverging at an angle of forty-five degrees. These posts were driven about a yard asunder; they were about twelve feet long, six feet being above water, and interlaced with branches wattled together, so as to form continuous hurdles, each about two hundred yards long, which are called bouchots. By the assistance of this apparatus, which intercepted spat which would otherwise have been swept away to sea by the tide, Walton formed a magnificent collection of mussels; but he did not abandon his isolated piles. These, being without fascines or branches, and always submerged, arrested the spat at the moment of emission."
Fig. 159. Punt or Pirogue of the Marsh.
The advantages of this system of culture adopted by the Irish exile were so obvious that his neighbours along the shore were not slow to imitate his example. In a short time the whole bay was covered with similar bouchots. At the present time these lines of hurdles form a perfect forest in the little creek. About two hundred and thirty thousand piles support a hundred and twenty-five thousand fascines, which, according to M. Coste, "bend all the year under a harvest which a squadron of ships of the line would fail to float." There are about five hundred of these bouchots in the bay, each from two hundred to two hundred and fifty yards in length and six feet high.
Fig. 160. Isolated piles covered with the spawn of mussels.