The Soft Clam 277 



cious clam chowder has become popular, and now, a 

 hundred miles inland from the New England shore, no 

 outing of a Mystic Order or Barber's Picnic is complete 

 without its clam bake, in which both soft and hard clams 

 are used. When one has the time for it, nothing on the 

 bill of fare of a restaurant is more tempting than the 

 dish of steamed soft clams with the cup of melted 

 butter. 



From the time when Captain John Smith wrote, " You 

 shall scarce find any Baye, Shallow Shore or Cove of 

 Sand, wyere you may not take many Clampes," to a quar- 

 ter of a century ago, many New England farmers living 

 near the shore made it a practice to fatten their hogs on 

 clams. 



Though the soft clam is sometimes found below the 

 low water line, it usually lies buried several inches be- 

 neath the surface of bottoms that are exposed at low tide. 

 It is found on narrow beaches, where only a few yards 

 of bottom are uncovered, but the larger beds are situated 

 on great flats. There are many places on the New Eng- 

 land coast where the low tide exposes hundreds of acres 

 of continuous flats, and most of these at one time bore 

 enormous beds of clams. It seems incredible that dig- 

 ging alone could have destroyed them, and yet without 

 question, this is almost the sole cause of the nearly com- 

 plete destruction that has occurred on almost all of these 

 immense beds. There is no such thing as an inexhausti- 

 ble supply of organisms useful to man. 



In Massachusetts, extensive flats are perhaps more 

 numerous than in other New England states. From the 

 mouth of the Merrimac River an almost continuous flat 

 extends southward to Gloucester, a distance of fifteen 

 miles. In Boston Harbor and the other bays connected 



