18 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



than at present. These facts also point to the most satisfactory explanation of the existence of numerous southern 

 shells, associated with the oyster and Venus mercenaria in the southern part of the gulf of St. Lawrence, though 

 not now found in the intermediate waters along the coast of Maine nor in the bay of Fundy. 



These remarks, it will be observed, apply to the whole coast, and are highly suggestive. In their light it is 

 useless to speculate upon the few remaining localities until Wellfleet, on the cape, is reached. 



Extinction of tde Wellfleet beds. — In Wellfleet harbor, as has already been shown, oysters were native 

 and widespread at the time of the discovery of the country by Europeans. The settlers began at once to make 

 use of them, and continued to do so as long as they lasted. Here we ought to know something definitely about 

 their extinction, but all the information is scattered and inexact. 



Wellfleet was anciently known as Billingsgate, at least that part of it on the western side, on account of the 

 abundance of the fish there, and this name became an oyster-brand during the last century. In the Maasacliuseits 

 Historical Collections, iii, is preserved a topographical description of Wellfleet, by Levi Whitman, dated 1793, in 

 which is given considerable information upon our subject. Mr. Whitman asserts his opinion that "no part of the 

 world has better oysters than the harbor of Wellfleet. Time was when they were to be found in the greatest plenty, 

 but in 1775 a mortality from an unknown cause carried off the most of them. Since that time Billingsgate oysters 

 have been scarce, and the greater part that are carried to market are first imijorted and laid in our harbor, where 

 they obtain the proper relish of Billingsgate". 



Forty years later Gould wrote, in his Invertebrates of Massachusetts: 



They say that Wellfleet, where the southern oysters are planted for Boston use, was originally called Billingsgate, on account of the 

 abuntlance of fish, and especially oysters, found there; that they co.itinued to be abundant until about the year 1780, when from some 

 cause they all died; and, to this day, immense beds are shown there of shells of native oysters which perished at that time. They say 

 that before that time no such thing was thought of as bringing oysters from the south. 



The Wellfleet oysterman, whom Thoreau talked so long with on his visit to the cape in 1849, and the charming 

 report of whose conversation is given us in that jjleasant author's Cape Cod, placed the date of the disappearance 

 of the oyster there as 1770. " Various causes are assigned for this, such as the ground frost, the carcasses of 

 blackfish left to rot in the harbor, and the like, but the most common account of the matter is, and I find that a 

 similar superstition with regard to the disappearance of fishes exists almost every where, that when Wellfleet began 

 to quarrel with the neighboring towns about the right to gather them, yellow specks appeared in them, and 

 Providence caused them to disappear." 



Nowadays, the citizens of the village repeat these traditions — all but the one about Providence — I did not hear 

 that — and hazard no new theory. It is perhaps most truthful of all to say, that excessive raking nearly depopulated 

 the beds, and that the blowing in of sand from the stripped hills, and the polluting of the tide-water by the oflal 

 of the fishing-vessels that throng the bay, destroyed the growth of the young. No doubt rotting carcasses of 

 schools of blackfish left on the beach (as has happened many a time) and the subtle anchor-frost helped — "that is, 

 a degree of cold so great as to cover the bottom with a coating of ice, and thereby to cut ofi' the oysters from all 

 access to air and nourishment." It is very probable, nevertheless, that many native oysters are stiU living in 

 Wellfleet bay, perpetuating the old stock. 



Wyman on the extinction of food-mollttsks in Florida and elsewhere. — I find some exceedingly 

 pertinent remarks on this subject in Dr. Jeffries Wyman's reiiort on the shell-heaps of Florida. They are as follows: 



It seems incredible to one who searches the waters of the St. John's and its lakes at the present time, that the two small species of 

 shells above mentioned could have been obtained in such vast quantities as are broujtht together in these mounds, unless at the times of 

 their fonnation the shells existed more abundantly than now, or the collection of them extended through very long ijeriods of time. When 

 it is borne in mind that the shell-heaps afl'ord the only suitable surface for dwellings, being most commonly built in swamps, or on lands 

 liable to be annually overflowed by the rise of the river, they appear to be necessarily the result of the labors of a few living on a 

 limited area at any one time. At the present, it would be a very difficult matter to bring together in a single day enough of these shells 

 for the daily meals of an ordinary family. That they formerly existed in larger numbers than now, is by no means improbable. It is well 

 known, with regard to both animals and plants, that after flourishing for considerable periods in given areas, they at length yield in tlieir 

 struggles for existence against ch.auged conditions. The oysters of which the gigantic shell-heaps on the Damariscotta river in Maine 

 are built were, without doubt, obtained from the adjoining waters, but to-day they are well-nigh extinct, and the same is in a measure 

 true of some of the deposits on Cape Cod, as at Cotuit Port. Analogous changes have been observed by European archa-ologists. The 

 oyster-banks near the mouth of the Baltic, from which many of the ancient shell-heaps of Denmark were formed, have disappeared, partly 

 through increasing freshness of the water, and partly through the ravages of the starfish. The last of them have disappeared from the 

 Iselfjord during a century, so that none are found further south than the northern end of the island of Seeland, and in large quantities 

 only on the more northern shores of the Kattegat. The water chestnut. Trapes natana, once very abundant in some of the Swiss lakes 

 during the age of the lake-dwellers, has now become extinct in those regions. — Smithsonian Report, 1865, p. 36.5. 



As the oysters of the ancient period were very much larger than those now found on the coast of Maine, it is 

 also the case that the shells from the mounds of the St. John's surpass in size, though to a less marked degree, 

 those of the actual period. 



