Anatomy of the Food Mollusks 25 



part of the pulpy body, being packed around the diges- 

 tive tract, extending down into the base of the foot, in 

 the quahaug, and backward in the oyster and scallop so 

 as nearly to surround the adductor muscle. The ducts 

 through which the sexual cells are discharged, open, one 

 on each side of the body, near the bases of the gills, 

 though in the scallop and some other lamellibranchs, 

 the opening is into the tube of the nephridium. 



The breeding season comes in the late spring and early 

 summer. All through the winter the body is swelling with 

 the accumulating sexual cells, and it is then, of course, 

 more valuable as a food. For several weeks the sexual 

 products are gradually discharged. By the middle of 

 the summer the body has become comparatively thin and 

 watery, especially in the soft clams, and remains so until 

 fall or early winter. Oysters, and probably clams also, 

 living in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, continue 

 to spawn through the summer, and the former, in these 

 localities, produce a few eggs during every month of 

 the year. 



It is often asked why oysters are not generally mar- 

 keted and eaten during the summer months, but the 

 reason is not that oysters are then somewhat less full 

 and nutritious, although that happens to be the case. 

 Reason plays no part in determining many human habits 

 and customs. The answer is simply that it is the custom 

 to eat oysters in winter and not in summer. It is the 

 custom south of Long Island Sound to eat " little necks " 

 — small, hard, or round clams — during the summer, and 

 to refrain from eating long neck clams. Just as it is the 

 custom, across the sound in Rhode Island, and in other 

 New England states, to use the long neck clams during 

 the summer in the famous clam-bake. The truth is that 



