BULLETIN OF TIIE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 85 



The sea-urchin also bores a hole in the shell of the mussel, but much 

 larger than the dog- whelk, the hole being about the size of a sixpence. 

 This very rarely occurs. I have only seen three instances, and that on 

 large mussels near low-water mark. 



Sea birds, Danish crows, and rats break the shell and devour the 

 mussel. 



I consider the best and only way that existing natural mussel beds 

 can be properly cultivated and protected is to make them the actual 

 property of some one. If they are allowed to be fished indiscriminately 

 they will quickly become exhausted, as has been the case with hundreds 

 of natural scalps on the coast. 



Fifty years ago mussels were very prolific on the east coast of Eng- 

 land, and almost every small harbor had its natural scalp outside, which 

 fed the "lays" or fattening grounds inside, to the great profit of the 

 owners of such lays. About that period some ill-starred individual dis- 

 covered they were valuable for manure, when commenced a raid on the 

 scalps, which is the origin of their present downfall. I can remember, 

 as a boy, seeing hundreds and thousands of tons brought to land and 

 sold to the farmers for manure, at three-halfpence a bushel 



An act was passed by Parliament in 1868, called "The sea fisheries 

 act, 18GS," which enables the board of trade to grant provisional orders 

 to corporations and private individuals to regulate oyster and mussel 

 fisheries; but the result, so far, has been very unsatisfactory. The 

 reports of Mr. H. Cholmondeley Pennell and Mr. W. E. Hall, two of the 

 inspectors of fisheries, on the oyster and mussel fisheries, at eighteen 

 different stations, show the beds to be worked in a very unsatisfactory 

 manner. 



Mr. Hall reports in 1877 that the Boston corporation undertook to 

 regulate the fishing in Boston deeps in the year 1870, so as to maintain 

 the supply. The oyster beds, he states, remain in the state of denuda- 

 tion which characterized them in 1869. The supply of mussels, how- 

 ever, seems to be rapidly diminishing, from the persistent poaching of 

 the fishermen and from want of power of the corporation under their 

 "order" to close a sufficient portion of the ground every year. A simi- 

 lar "order" was granted to the corporation of King's Lynn in 1872. 

 Mr. Hall reports on this "order" that the corporation system of man- 

 agement in regard to mussels is dangerous to the permanent welfare of 

 the fishery, whilst as regards oysters the order is not carried into effect. 



Under clause 4 of the order, the corporation is compelled to keep open 

 for fishing two-thirds of the area of the oyster and mussel beds, thus 

 leaving a large porportion of the whole in a great measure at the mercy 

 of the fishermen ; and Mr. Hall justly points out the danger to which 

 the mussel beds of the wash are necessarily exposed from this provision. 



When a mussel bed is opened by either of the above-mentioned cor- 

 porations, a day is fixed and duly advertised, and at twelve o'clock at 

 night scores of boats commence taking the mussels, some by tons and 



