I I 6 ECONOMY OF THE MUSSEL chap. 



The mussel -spat affixes itself iiatm-ally to the bouchots 

 nearest the sea, in January and February. Towards May the 

 planting begins. The young mussels are scraped off these 

 outermost bouchots, and placed in small bags made of old 

 canvas or netting, each bag holding a good handful of the 

 mussels. The bags are then fastened to some of the inner 

 boucliots, and the mussels soon attach themselves by their 

 byssus, the bag rotting and falling away. They hang in clusters, 

 increasing rapidly in size, and at the proper time are trans- 

 planted to bouchots farther and farther up the tide level, the 

 object being to bring the matured animal as near as possible to 

 the land when it is time for it to be gathered. This process, 

 which aims at keeping the mussel out of the mud, while at the 

 same time giving it all the nutrition that comes from such a 

 habitat, extends over about a year in the case of each individual. 

 Quality, rather than quantity, is the aim of the Esnaudes 

 boucholiers. The element of quantity, however, seems to come 

 in when we are told that each yard of the bouchots is calculated 

 to yield a cartload of mussels, value 6 francs, and that the whole 

 annual revenue is at least £52,000. 



In this country, and especially in Scotland, mussels are 

 largely used as bait for long-line fishing. Of late years other 

 substances have rather tended to take the place of mussels, but 

 within the last twenty years, at Newhaven on the Firth of Forth, 

 three and a half million mussels were required annually to 

 supply bait for four deep-sea craft and sixteen smaller vessels. 

 According to Ad. Meyer,^ boughs of trees are laid down in 

 Kiel Bay, and taken up again, after three, four, or five years, 

 between December and March, when they are found covered 

 with fine mussels. The boughs are then sold, just as they are,. 

 by weight, and the shell-fish sent into the interior of Germany. 



Mussels are very sensitive to cold weather. In 1874, during 

 an easterly gale, 195 acres of mussels at Boston, in Lincolnshire, 

 were killed in a single night. They soon affix themselves to the 

 bottom of vessels that have lain for any length of time in harbour 

 or near the coast. The bottom of the Great Eastern steamship 

 was at one time so thickly coated with mussels that it was esti- 

 mated that a vessel of 200 tons could have been laden from her. 



In some of our low-lying coast districts mussels are a 



^ Quoted by Jeffreys, Brit. Conch, ii. p. 109. 



