67 



in the Avhole area supervised by this Committee. These 

 skears were amongst the first to show the effect of the 

 Bye-laws. The over-production was much greater than 

 the removals, and in a few years the beds became over- 

 crowded with the new generations. The additions settled 

 on the top of the older stock and soon grew over them. 

 In some instances the older layers were eventually 

 smothered. In others an efficient food supply was pre- 

 vented from reaching them and they slowly starved. The 

 result was, the fishermen found it more and more difficult 

 to get their orders completed with legal sized mussels, and 

 they occasionally took the smaller ones. This brought 

 the men into conflict with the officers of the Committee, 

 and prosecutions naturally followed. The difficulty in 

 complying with the two and a quarter inch size limit, 

 without evil consequenccvS to themselves, led the fishermen 

 lo approach the (.'ommittee with a petition, for the reduc- 

 liou of the size limit to two inches. After much agitation 

 on the part of the men, the Bye-law was revised and two 

 inches became the minimum legal size in 1902. This 

 concession in the size limit was practically made to allow 

 a greater thinning to be done. So far as Heysham was 

 concerned, the reduction in limit had very little effect. 

 The over-production still greatly exceeded the removals 

 and the difficulty in obtaining sufficient legal size mussels 

 continued. A further reduction in the size limit would 

 have proved unsatisfactory from the consumers' point of 

 view. Large mussels have the preference over the 

 smaller ones and also command a higher market value. 

 Other solutions to this problem had to be looked for, and 

 finally a system of thinning was adopted. This thinning 

 had a two-fold object. (1) To remove large quantities of 

 small mussels from over-crowded beds leaving the 

 remainder more growing space: and (2) to re-stock older 



