252 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
Mr. Fryer. I doubt if there is very much albumen in them; they are chiefly oil. 
The PRESIDENT. I am glad to be corrected. I think Mr. Atkins was about to 
speak. 
é Mr. C. G. Atkins. I have not a great deal to say, Mr. President, but having tried 
the flavor of these various things that have been spoken of, I would like to say that I 
found personally the flavor of the dogfish was agreeable to me, and the flavor of the 
salt-water mussel, but that fresh-water mussel was very disagreeable. 
As to Doctor Nordqvist’s suggestion that we make use of the dogfish and other 
refuse sea fishes for feeding fish, I have been for several seasons trying to induce the 
fishermen to sell it for that purpose—to bring the dogfish in—but I got very few from 
them. I propose to carry the matter further and try to get quite a supply of them; in 
fact, to try them further for feeding salmonoid fishes. They are very numerous in my 
vicinity. Late in the summer they become a dreadful pest in all the fisheries—haddock, 
cod, and all those other fisheries along the coast. 
Mr. JOHN J. Pew. I have tried dogfish where it has been tinned—I understood 
the northern dogfish. We had some tried in our office, which were sent us to see what 
it would be worth for mercantile purposes. We tried the flavor and to keep them in 
the can awhile. The color was disagreeable, not taking at all, and the flavor was not 
very acceptable to any of us, and we thought it was a waste of time and money to.try 
to put them to use in our trade. We concluded the best method was to destroy them 
and use what we have on our coast for oil and fertilizer purposes. 
Professor Prince. I do not want to inflict myself too much on the congress, but 
the subject which was brought up before us in the very excellent paper by Doctor 
Field has a great personal interest to me. 
The first official work I ever did in fisheries was on a mussel commission in the 
old country, and I happened to be secretary of that commission. We went very fully 
into the uses of the mussel, and in our report published a number of interesting facts. 
One was the enormous amount of mussels annually consumed in London and other 
English cities as food. The amount was appalling, 10,000 tons per annum in London, 
if I remember correctly. Then we found that there was a very large amount used for 
bait by the long-line fishermen. They relied upon the mussel as their principal bait, 
and such a demand was there for these mussels for bait that British supplies were 
insufficient and mussels were imported from Holland, where mussel cultivation has 
been carried on to a very large extent; and I am only sorry that Doctor Hoek is not 
present, because he has a very thorough knowledge of what has been done in the 
Netherlands in the matter of mussel cultivation. The Dutch have gained wealth from 
their mussel beds. They export very largely to Scotland, because the Scottish beds 
were not large enough to supply the demand. 
Personally, I have very pleasant recollection of mussels from my early days. By 
most people in England the mussel was considered rather a delicate morsel. I remem- 
ber as a boy going to bed after a supper of mussels, and I sometimes feared the conse- 
quences, but I do not think I ever suffered harm. ‘There is a large amount of hepatic 
matter in the mussel, the liver being very large indeed; but, at any rate, it is a most 
excellent and succulent mollusk, and it is astonishing that it has not been more 
utilized on this continent for the two purposes which have been mentioned, namely, 
bait and food. 
Perhaps we ought to be cautious in recommending the use generally, without 
some tests being made. I may be wrong, but I have some recollection that when 
Captain Cook navigated the Pacific coast some of his crew went ashore and ate mussels, 
and I think one of the men died. That may have been due to the fact that it was not 
properly a mussel, but I know on some parts of the Canadian coast the mussels are 
not quite equal to the mussels of Europe. The matter is one that can well be looked into. 
