Like all kinds of property in France, the salt marshes are much divided. More than three thousand proprietors share that of Guérande; and there is a kind of co-operative partnership between the owner and the worker, the latter generally receiving a quarter of the profits, out of which he pays the porters. The gain is, however, miserably small; and the wonder is how the various families manage to exist upon it. Even if the wife and daughter help, the whole family only earn about two hundred and fifty-five francs a year--ten pounds of our money; and in consequence of the season when the salt is collected, the _paludier_ has no chance of increasing his income by assisting the farmers, and can only employ himself in the trifling labours of winter. So low, indeed, have the profits sunk, that in some marshes the expenses have exceeded them; in short there is no kind of property in France that has for the last century undergone more terrible reverses than this. These changes are partly due to the railways, which have provided a much more efficient and rapid means of transport for the east of France than for the west. There are three large zones in the country where salt is found. In the eastern district it is derived from springs and mines; but in the present day the salt mines are treated like the springs. Instead of dividing the lumps with the pickaxe, galleries are cut through and flooded with water; when this is sufficiently saturated, it is brought to the surface and evaporated in heated caldrons. The aid of the sun is not required; fine or rainy days do not count, and the making of salt becomes a trade for all the year round. In the south the plan is varied, because there is no tide in the Mediterranean Sea. Here, by the help of a mechanical apparatus, the sea-water is pumped into enormous squares, where it crystallises, and the evaporation is accelerated by a continual circulation. With a warm temperature and a cloudless sky, the water requires to be renewed only at intervals, whilst the salt itself is not collected until the end of summer. Thus the poor workmen of Brittany have a more laborious and less remunerative task, though the salt is acknowledged to be of a finer quality.