"UNIONID^ AND MYTILID^. 89 



sea : they have a slender foot^ at the base of which is a 

 byssal groove. 



I. Mytilus ediilis, or the Common Eatable Mussel^ has a 

 very prettily fringed open mantle, and a long slender 

 foot, from 'which it spins a very strong byssus. It is 

 collected in great numbers for three distinct purposes, 

 namely, for food, for bait, and for pearls. 

 " As bait, the consumption is very large in some places ; 

 so much so, that the beds, which in many cases are private 

 property, and yield large incomes, are becoming exhausted. 

 In Newhaven alone there are four large deep-sea fishing- 

 boats, which generally go out three times a week, and fish 

 for about thirty weeks in the year, excluding Sundays and 

 bad weather. Each of these large boats carries eight men, 

 with eight lines of eight hundred yards in length, which, at 

 a low calculation, take twelve hundred mussels to bait, each 

 time they are so used; so that each large boat will use 

 28,800 mussels per week, equal to 864,000 per annum. 

 But there are about sixteen other smaller boats, which go 

 out daily, or rather at twelve o'clock every night, for about 

 the same number of weeks in a year. Each carries four 

 men, with four lines, eight hundred yards long ; their con- 

 sumption of mussels will come to 3,456,000 : the total con- 



