538 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



consideration is rare north of Cape Cod and extends as far south 

 as the Gulf of Mexico. In summer it is found among the eel- 

 grass, where it breeds, and in the autumn comes into the shallow 

 waters to feed. It moves by swimming in a dancing manner by 

 suddenly closing its shells and ejecting the water and then tak- 

 ing in more. This is a beautiful sight in an aquarium, where 

 they dance about like castanets played by an invisible hand. 

 They are often seen in great schools, moving along, and when the 

 tide is with them they sometimes go half a mile before dropping 

 to the bottom. The scallop can see quite well, being furnished 

 with a row of thirty or more beautiful blue eyes in the outer edge 

 of the mantle of each side, the eyes increasing in number with 

 the growth of the animal. This mantle is the " rim " of the fisher- 

 man, and, with the gills and a very flabby stomach, is about all 

 of the scallop, except the great adductor muscle before mentioned. 

 This muscle leaves no mark in the shells, such as is seen in the 

 shells of the oyster and quahaug or hard clam. The shells of the 

 scallop are unequal, the lower one being more convex and lighter 

 in color than the other, and in opening them the dark side is held 

 uppermost by a right-handed man, because it brings the " meat,'^ 

 which is not in the center, in the proper place for speedy work ; 

 a left-handed person, of course, requires the deep white side up. 

 The openers, or " shuckers " as they would be called in Baltimore 

 and the South, stand in a row in front of the benches, and drop the 

 shells through a hole into a barrel, toss the meats in a square box 

 holding two quarts, and the rims into another place, and they be- 

 come very expert at this in time. Men and women open from fif- 

 teen to eighteen gallons a day, and children often open three or 

 four gallons after school. Formerly the price paid for this work 

 was twenty-five cents per gallon for all, but of late years the price 

 has dropped with the market price of the meats to sixteen cents 

 for large and twenty-five for small ones. In November, 1894, the 

 shippers only got sixty-five cents a gallon from the market men 

 and many stopped fishing, and the season of 1895 was no better, 

 the fishermen attributing the failure to dredging late in the 

 spring when the seed of the year was marketed in order to get 

 high prices. They open two quarts to the bushel of shells and 

 vary in size from eighty to three hundred and twenty to the 

 quart; a gallon will weigh about eight pounds. Fifteen years 

 ago fifty thousand bushels of shells were sold to oyster planters 

 for catching spat, at two and a half cents per bushel ; now the 

 shells sell at six cents per bushel, and in some shops the rims are 

 left with the shells. The shell of the scallop is excellent for 

 catching oyster spat, because it is so fragile that it goes to pieces 

 before the oysters begin to crowd and deform each other, as is 

 the case where many set on a hard shell like that of the oyster. 



