CHAPTER XXV 



CIVIC PROBLEMS RELATING TO MOLLUSKS 



It is doubtful whether there is any farming land in the United States 

 which yields as great a profit to the acre as the bottoms which are used for 

 oyster-planting in Rhode Island. W. K. BROOKS, "The Oyster," p. 135 



The sea mussel (Mytilus edulis) is one of the most important food re- 

 sources of the ocean, and as yet France, Belgium, and Holland are the only 

 nations that appreciate its real food value, No shellfish grows so rapidly 

 and abundantly. Natural beds often contain as many as 8000 bushels to the 

 acre, and planted beds yield at the end of three years from 4000 to 6000 

 bushels per acre. At present prices this means from $ 1600 to $2400 per acre 

 every three years. 



The high nutritive value and low cost of sea mussels make them the most 

 economical shellfish on the market. The same money will buy four times as 

 much food in mussels as if spent for long clams, and ten and twenty times 

 as much as if invested in oysters and, lobsters respectively. They are also 

 most palatable and easily digested. As these facts come to be better under- 

 stood it is hoped that the American people will no longer neglect this 

 vast source of food supply, but convert it into the wealth of the nation. 

 IRVING A. FIELD 



Possibilities of marine food supply. " Four feet square of 

 the ocean is capable of producing food enough to support a 

 human being." 1 This statement, made in a public lecture 

 by an eminent authority, may seem incredible, but it may 

 also serve to indicate that we have scarcely begun to realize 

 the wealth of life in the waters. Of the 518,900 species 

 of animals known, 61,000 are mollusks, almost all aquatic. 

 In regard to how many of these do we know anything? 

 Oriental peoples utilize a considerable number of them, and 

 Europeans, since remote antiquity, have feasted upon deli- 

 cious mollusks, common but unknown to us. 



1 Statement by Major McGee in an address at the University of Wis- 

 consin, 1892. 



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