26 MUSSELS OP CUMBERLAND RIVER AND TRIBUTARIES. 



had fine red eggs in all four gills and the body was orange; the former 

 had coarse white glochidia in only one pair of gills. 



On proceeding down the main river from Burnside the first mussel 

 bed of note is on the bar below the mouth of Fishing Creek. Very 

 few living mussels were seen here, but the entire river bed was covertd 

 with shells which had been killed by pearlers. A large number of 

 beautifully marked univalves were present among the dead mussel 

 shells. 



At Fords Island the bottom of the left chute, which we examined 

 most carefully, is a shingly gravel, in which it was difficult to find 

 the mussels. ]VIi\ Boepple, who examined this bed in 1910 with a 

 mussel rake, reported an "almost unbelievable quantity" of Unio 

 crassidens. The present party would probably have obtained many 

 more mussels if the bed could have been examined during low water. 



Four miles farther downstream, at Mill Springs, is another long 

 and straggling mussel bed, which covers several miles of the river 

 bottom. The latter is here composed of shingly gravel, with some 

 sand bars, and is largely covered with water-willows. 



The pearlers' piles along the banks opposite this bed were chiefly 

 the shells of Unio crassidens (elephant-ear) with some Dromus and 

 Quadrula obliqua (Ohio River pigtoe). Although this was not an 

 important shell bed it was noteworthy for the increase in the number 

 of species. The pocketbooks {L. ovata) found here were the first 

 typical ones seen. 



At the pearling camp 1^ miles below Eadsville or Lock 21 we found 

 the water about 2 feet above normal and rising rapidly, with a 

 swift current over a gravel bottom. The pearlers were farmers from 

 near by, who carried on pearling at odd times. They had thrown 

 their opened shells back into the river, and there were about a ton 

 and a half of them lying in the shallow water along shore. The 

 pocketboofe (L. ovata), muckets, and elephant-ears were the most 

 numerous species. Mr. Boepple investigated Gands Island, in this 

 vicinity, and found the mussels, especially Unio crassidens, abundant 

 on both sides of the island, an unusual circumstance. 



Beaver Creek is a small tributary of the Cumberland from the 

 south, opposite Rowena, Ky. This creek was investigated for a 

 mile, up to a series of long riffles. The bottom was rocky with con- 

 siderable mud and sand, in which were obtained a surprising variety 

 of shells for so small a stream, as is shown in the table. 



In the mouth of Goose Creek, a little way down the river, a man 

 was seen actively pearling with a fork. He said that he was getting 

 mostly elephant-ears and that there were plenty of muckets on 

 the other side of the ri^er but the water was too high to work them. 

 Mr. Boepple saw a fine lot of about 50 pearls in Rowena during his 

 stop there in 1910. 



