350 Our Food Mollusks 



on our shallow bottoms and tidal areas in enormous num- 

 bers, and is a great pest on oyster and clam beds. Yet it 

 is marketed in but one or two of our Atlantic cities, and 

 is eaten for the most part by foreigners. A near rela- 

 tive of the black mussel, Modiola, is quite as good for 

 fcod. The large sea clam (Mactra), and the razor 

 clam (Ensis) of the Atlantic, Gnathodon and Pholas 

 of the Gulf, sometimes used locally for food, are rarely 

 found in any market. Of the last mentioned, only 

 Gnathodon is very abundant, however. It is true that 

 most of these forms have a sweetish taste that is not 

 agreeable to many persons, and intestinal troubles in rare 

 instances result from eating the black mussel. 



Among fishes there are many of fine flavor that are not 

 esteemed, and others perhaps equally good that are never 

 eaten because it is not the custom. One of the best ex- 

 amples of wastefulness in the matter of food is afforded 

 by the dogfish, a small shark some four feet in length so 

 destructive to other fishes, and so numerous that it has 

 come to be regarded as the most serious menace con- 

 fronting our marine fisheries. It has been estimated that 

 thirty-seven million dogfish, equal in weight to half the 

 total catch of Massachusetts fishermen, were taken by 

 them in 1905. These pests are liberated after being 

 caught, because at present they are of no value. They 

 are almost equally numerous everywhere on the Atlantic 

 coast, and are exceedingly abundant on the Pacific as 

 well. And yet the flesh of the dogfish is firm, snow- 

 white, and of very good flavor — not by any means to be 

 regarded as inferior when one is unacquainted with its 

 source — and the fact that such enormous numbers of 

 them are each year actually taken from the water and 

 cast back again, is a sad one to contemplate in view of 



