168 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



reputation of the mussel has gone half way across the continent. If 

 the packers would only put them on the market packed in glass, I 

 would guarantee that they would find a sale. 



Mr. Dyche: I found a prejudice against them on the Pacific Coast 

 and on the Labrador Coast, and as far north as there are any fishermen 

 they are prejudiced against them. I have eaten them myself and like 

 them. Along the Greenland Coast I do not remember seeing any 

 shells around any Eskimo camp. The Eskimos nearly starve to death 

 sometimes but I never knew an Eskimo to eat a mussel. The fishermen 

 are afraid of them ; they make them sick, they say. 



Professor Field : I have been eating them for four years and I am 

 still alive. 



Mr. Dyche : I have eaten them several years and I am still alive. 



Dr. Briggs : They make a good bait and it may save some of our 

 clams if we can take a can of mussels for bait instead of clams. 



Dr. Raymond Osburn, New York : I am one of Professor Field's 

 original victims at Wood's Hole, and have not suffered anything in stature 

 at least. If any of us visited the Mediterranean region and saw how 

 they utilized this species of shellfish it would open our eyes to the 

 possibilities of this source of food. When you find them diving for 

 mussels and see naked boys around Naples bringing up specimens no 

 larger than my thumb and marketing them it gives us an idea of the 

 way in which those people appreciate and are utilizing sea mussels as 

 food. 



Mr. W. E. Meehan, Harrisburg, Pa. : Are the mussels the professor 

 speaks of the same as the blue mussel? 



Mr. Dyche: The Danes can them and eat them, but that is a 

 different shell fish. I never saw the Danes eat the blue mussel. It is a 

 different species altogether. 



Mr. Donald Nicoll, New York : I spent considerable time in my 

 younger days in Australia, in Melbourne and Sydney. There they 

 considered mussels quite a treat. I never heard of their being 

 poisonous until I came to this country. But I have heard that they have 

 > little beard or byssus which is poisonous. 



Professor Field: That is only a superstition. 



Mr. Nicoll : They eat them a great deal in Australia. They consider 

 them a great luxury and never complain of any ill eflfects. 



