316 Our Food Mollusks 



in its widest sense, or even the actual subsistence of the 

 increasing population, was to be maintained. The 

 acquisition of titles to land areas was the first logical step. 

 The fixing of permanent bounds was simple. The land 

 then furnished a more readily accessible and certain 

 source of food, which not only could be produced with 

 relatively little labor and capital, but which from its very 

 nature would be readily and compactly stored in barns, 

 cellars and granaries, where its quality did not deter- 

 iorate and where it was quickly available in stress and 

 storm. The chance which brought the first settlers to 

 Plymouth rather than to another section of our coast was 

 responsible for the present law, that the owners of land 

 bordering tide water own the tidal flats for a distance of 

 TOO rods (approximately the conditions at Plymouth), 

 or to mean low-water mark if less than 100 rods from 

 the high-water mark. In accordance with the early 

 English law, the ' fisheries,' which the courts have since 

 decided included the mollusk fisheries, were declared to 

 be forever the property of the whole people, i.e., the 

 State ; and these fisheries were for a long period open to 

 any inhabitant of the State who might need to dig the 

 shellfish for food for his family or for bait. From 

 time to time, however, special grants have been made to 

 certain towns, carrying control of the shellfisheries; spe- 

 cial acts of the General Court of Massachusetts delegat- 

 ing to certain towns practically all the rights of the 

 State in the shellfisheries within the limits of that town. 

 " The present laws have essentially in a marked de- 

 gree converted the shellfisheries, the undivided property 

 of all the inhabitants of the State, into holdings of the 

 shore towns and cities. In many instances there has re- 

 sulted up to the present time merely legalized plundering 



