THE SHELIL-FISH OF THE COAST. 37 
few inches in our sand-clam, in other forms it con- 
siderably surpasses a foot, and, indeed, in a species 
from the Californian coast (Gilycimeris generosa) it 
reaches a full yard, with a thickness somewhat ex- 
ceeding that of a stout broom-handle. The sand- 
clam, which is abundant almost everywhere in the 
North in the tidal zone—estuaries, muddy inlets, 
and sandy shores—is a broadly distributed species, 
extending its range eastward to the British Isles 
and the continent of Europe. In the New England 
markets it is a common article of sale, but in New 
York and Philadelphia its place is almost entirely 
taken by the hard-shell clam or quahog. The In- 
dians appear to have been very fond of these clams, 
which were known to them as Sickishuog. John 
Winthrop, in a communication made to the Royal 
Society of England in 1634, thus describes the 
species: ‘‘ Clams—white. Their broth is most ex- 
cellent in all intermitting fevers, consumption, ete. 
These clams feed only on sand.” 
On the New Jersey coast the sand-clam is some- 
times called, after the Indian name, ‘ maninose’ 
(corrupted to ‘nannynose’), and, to distinguish it 
from the quahog, the ‘ soft-shell clam.’ 
It frequently happens as the result of a storm that 
large cakes of a stiff gray or blue clay, more or less 
firmly matted together by vegetable fibres, and in 
some localities having a peaty aspect, are cast upon 
the beach. These masses are the abiding-place of 
great numbers of an interesting boring mollusk 
known to conchologists as Petricola (Pl. 2, Fig. 20), 
the ‘stone-dweller,’ which has forced its way in by 
4 
