MUSSEL-GARDENS. 307 
repast of the Greenlander but also of the white bear and arctic 
fox, are equally reckoned among the most delicate of bivalves. 
The common Mussel (Mytilus edulis), which is found in 
the littoral zone on almost every rocky shore, is eaten in vast 
numbers by the coast inhabitants, and carried in enormous 
masses into the interior of the country; it furnishes an equally 
cheap and agreeable food, but is not easy of digestion, and some- 
times produces symptoms of poisoning, which have been ascribed 
to the eggs of asterias, on which it feeds 
during the summer. In the northern coun- 
tries it is also in great request as a bait for 
cod, ling, rays, and other large fishes that 
are caught by the line. In the Frith of 
Forth alone from thirty to forty millions of 
mussels are used for this purpose, and in 
many places they are enclosed in gardens, 
the ground of which is covered with large 
stones, to which they attach themselves by 
their byssus or beard. 
It is a curious fact that the rearing of mussels should have 
been introduced into France as far back as the year 1235, by an 
Irishman of the name of Walton. This man, who had been 
shipwrecked in the Bay de l’Aigui!lon, and gained a precarious 
living by catching sea-birds, observed that the mussels, which 
had attached themselves to the poles on which he spread his nets 
over the shallow waters, were far superior to those that naturally 
grow in the mud, and immediately made use of his discovery 
by founding the first “ bowchvl,” or mussel-park, consisting of 
stakes and rudely interwoven branches. His example soon 
found imitators, and, strange to say, the method of construction 
adopted by Walton, six centuries ago, has been maintained un- 
altered to the present day. It may give some idea of the 
immense resources that might be obtained from so many utterly 
neglected lagunes when we hear that the fishermen of |’Aiguillon, 
although they sell three hundredweight of mussels for the very 
low sum of five francs, or four shillings, annually export or send 
them into the interior to the amount of a million or twelve 
hundred thousand francs. 
The praise which Pliny bestowed on the oyster, calling it the 
palm or glory of the table, is still re-echoed by thousands of 
Edible Mussel. 
