THE SCALLOP. 



535 



patty of oysters in, they liave given the name of " scolloped oys- 

 ters " to the dish, whether served in the shells or otherwise. 



The only portion of this handsome bivalve that is edible is the 

 adductor muscle, which closes the shells and corresponds to the 

 " hard part " in the oyster, often miscalled the " eye " ; the rest of 

 the animal, being very soft, is called the rim by the fishermen. 

 The little village of New Suffolk, on Great Peconic Bay, which 

 divides the eastern end of Long Island into two long peninsu- 

 las, lives mainly from the scallop fisheries, which begin in Sep- 

 tember and end about the first of May, and are only interfered 

 with by the freezing of the bay or by floating ice, for the hardy 

 fishermen seldom mind the weather unless a gale should interfere 



Going it alone. 



with the management of the boats, which are small sloops of fiv^ 

 to fifteen tons burden and are managed by two men — one at the 

 tiller and the other at the dredges. They use from one to six 

 dredges, according to the size of the boat. The scallop fleet of 

 New Suffolk comprises twenty-six boats, and some few others of 

 a smaller class occasionally join in the work. About seventy men 

 do the catching and carting, while twenty men, thirty women, and 

 eighty children open and prepare the catch for market ; and as the 

 population of the place is only two hundred and seventy -five, it 

 may be truly said that all — grocer, postmaster, and stage driver — 

 live from the catching of scallops. Children stop on the way 

 home from school and open a few quarts, and mothers often rock 

 the cradle with one foot while standing on the other at work in 

 the shops. 



Greenport, Sag Harbor, and other places on Long Island do 

 much in this line of work, and tons of scallops come to New York 

 from Rhode Island and other waters east of New York ; but the 



