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growth absolutely phenomenal when compared with that 

 even of France ; a second experiment in the current year 

 has confirmed the previous one. Mussels of eight inches 

 in leneth are also common and the clam is so abundant 

 as to provide a large lime-burning industry with shell. 



Though the oyster and mussel are not greatly utilised 

 as food in India there is a wide opening for a preserving 

 industry ; shelled and iced they would be in large demand 

 amongst Europeans in India ; shelled and dried there is 

 an inexhaustible market in China ; properly canned they 

 would be taken in large quantities in western countries 

 and by Europeans in India ; reduced to extract — with 

 or without the meat — by proper processes, they form a 

 highly nourishing and digestible food specially recom- 

 mended for invalids ; mussels and clams are, in America, 

 made into extract which is considered superior even to 

 that from oysters. 



Before thece steps can be taken it is necessary to 

 survey our best beds, to consider the methods and 

 restrictions necessary for promoting their development, 

 and culture, to test the methods by experiment, and then 

 to publish the details ; the Ennore experiment is only a 

 first and slight step in this direction. Restrictions are 

 obviously necessary. Great Britain, America, France, 

 Holland have all ascertained this necessity, and in India 

 we have as a first warning the practical, if temporary, 

 destruction, or at least depletion, of the well-known 

 Karachi oyster beds which formerly supplied excellent 

 oysters in ice at cheap rates to up-country consumers, 

 but which have been depleted by wasteful methods and 

 by the total absence of culture ; these mistakes must be 

 avoided. 



More and better by-products. — This paper can only 

 touch and that briefly, on two such products, viz., sardine 

 oil and fertilizer. As mentioned above, sardine reach 

 the West Coast (and northern parts of the East Coast) 

 in shoals vast but of very irregular periodicity, from June 

 to March ; during the south-west monsoon they are 

 practically protected by the weather, which is fortunate 

 since they are then spawning, but from October to 

 March they are fat and easily attacked. These fish 

 produce abundance of fish oil, while the "scrap" after 

 the expression of the oil is a first class fish guano and 

 should contain about 8 percent, of nitrogen, and a nearly 



