314 Our Food Mollusks 



But the difficulty of defining the conditions on a flat of 

 ordinary fertility is naturally great. All that may be 

 said is that, usually, it would not be safe to plant a 

 greater number than this. With experience one may 

 estimate with some confidence the possibilities of an un- 

 tried bottom after examining it, and becoming familiar 

 with the flow of water over it; but certainty in all cases 

 is to be had only by trial. 



Extensive experiments are numerous enough to make 

 it certain that on many of our flats now almost entirely 

 barren, it would be possible to produce each year at 

 least four hundred bushels of marketable clams to the 

 acre. These should be made to return a net profit of at 

 least seventy-five cents a bushel, and probably more, for 

 the labor involved is not great. It has been estimated, 

 after a careful examination of the coast of Massachusetts 

 by trained biologists, that there are now in that state six 

 thousand acres of barren bottoms capable of producing 

 clams. The available territory in the other northern 

 states is not so great, but in some it is very extensive, 

 and all of it together might be made to produce a vast 

 amount of food. It now lies as it has lain for many 

 years, almost entirely barren and useless. 



In the newer parts of our country it has not been dif- 

 ficult for a few individuals to obtain control of natural 

 resources. Such a state of affairs is unjust and detri- 

 mental to the best interests of the nation, and has re- 

 sulted in a wanton and appalling waste of wealth, all of 

 which properly belongs to the many and not to the very 

 few. But on our eastern shore the fisheries, which the 

 courts have decided include the mollusk fisheries, theo- 

 retically belong to all the people, and it is interesting to 

 observe that by exercising these rights that they hold in 



