CHAPTER XXI 

 THE HARD CLAM 



EXT in commercial importance to Ostrea and 

 Mya arenaria in New England, is the hard 

 clam. It is a warm water form, and its dis- 

 tribution extends from the southern side of 

 Cape Cod to Texas. Small isolated beds exist in warmer 

 bays above Cape Cod, but they are very few. The ranges 

 of hard and soft clams overlap from Cape Cod to the 

 Chesapeake, but from New York southward the hard 

 clam becomes " the clam." 



Venus mercenaria is so called because a portion of the 

 inner surface of its shell is often stained a beautiful bluish 

 purple, and this was used by the Indians of the eastern 

 shore in the manufacture of wampum beads. Wampum 

 was used not only for dress ornamentation, and symbolic 

 belts exchanged to seal intertribal transactions, but also 

 as a currency medium even in trading with the early 

 white settlers. 



A common name for Venus in New England is " qua- 

 haug " or " quahog," and is probably derived from an 

 Indian name which signified " tightly closed " a better 

 name for the genus than that given to it by the naturalists 

 thus distinguishing the shell from that of Mya. The 

 term " little neck clam " is also used, for the siphon or 

 " neck " is much shorter than in Mya, and the origin of 



321 



