3 i8 



safe to encounter the winter gales, were taken into the 

 shallow waters, where they served as hotels and work- 

 houses for the men engaged in quarrying the clams. 

 These men spent two or three months in gathering a vessel 

 load, shelling and salting them, to be sold in the early 

 spring to the vessels engaged in the great ocean cod 

 fisheries ; whilst large numbers were also engaged, during 

 the entire summer, gathering them to be sold in the larger 

 markets for food, where they were prized very highly, not 

 only by the labouring classes, but by the best people of 

 the country. It appeared to him that the people of Europe 

 had at their doors a large resource wholly undeveloped, 

 and he should be very glad if, by calling attention to this 

 question, he should in any way assist in adding to the 

 stock of food, or to the readiness with which fishermen 

 might procure bait. 



Dr. DAY said he had made some inquiries with regard 

 to the mussel fisheries last year when in H.M.S. Crichton 

 on the east coast of Scotland. It had been suggested 

 by Mr. Harding that the mussel beds should be granted 

 to private individuals to work, because if they were left 

 open to the fishermen they would work them out until 

 nothing was left. But then a difficult question came 

 forward. If these mussel beds were granted to private 

 individuals, how were the fishermen to get their bait ? 

 They complained that when mussels were in the hands of 

 private individuals, the charge was so great that they could 

 not get bait for fishing. If any or all of these beds in one 

 locality were given to a private individual under Govern- 

 ment supervision, it ought to be on the distinct under- 

 standing that the mussels were forthcoming at a certain 

 price, not a prohibitive one, and that the fishermen could 

 have them at any time. 



