THE SCALLOP FISHERY. 569 



ber ; in November a bushel will yield pints, while a mouth later a gallon of meat is "cut out" of 

 a single bushel of shells. Exactly similar reports of difference between the first and last of the 

 season were given me at Greenwich. The fishermen call this increase "growing," and it seems to 

 be the fact. 



Fishermen believe that scallops never spawn more than once, and die before they reach an 

 ago of three years. Mr. Wm. Wilson, an experienced fisherman and dealer in .Rhode Island, told 

 Mr. Lndwig Kumlien, of the Fisheries Census staff, that specimens two years old were seldom 

 taken alive, and were "of no account as food." Another Jisherin an stated that he had captured 

 " only two two-year-olds in the whole season." At Northport, Long Island, T was assured that 

 scallops were tolerably plentiful in that harbor once in five years. The second year following the 

 season of plenty would produce a few, the third year a scattering one or two, the fourth year abso- 

 lutely nothing. Then would come a sudden accession from some unknown source. Much the 

 same story comes from Port Jefferson, L. I. 



If this theory of scallop reproduction be true, it presents a case where the generations follow 

 one another so rapidly that there are never two ranks, or generations, in condition to reproduce their 

 kind at once, except in rare individual instances, since all or nearly all of the old ones die before 

 the young ones have grown old enough to spawn. If such a state of affairs exist, of course any 

 sudden catastrophe, such as a great and cold storm during the winter, or the covering of the water 

 where they lie for a long period under a sheet ot ice, happening to kill all the tender young (and 

 old ones, too, often) in a particular district, will exterminate the breed there, since, even if the older 

 and tougher ones survive this shock they will not live long enough, or at any rate will be unable 

 to spawn again, and so start a new generation. It is easy to see, too, how an excessive onslaught 

 of dredging in a particular district might utterly destroy the fishing there until some fortunate, 

 perhaps long-delayed, accident should recolonize the district with a new set of scallops descended 

 from wholly outside stock. This was appreciated when the Cape Cod man remarked, in lamenting 

 the ruin which was being perpetrated by the too greedy pursuit of scallops in the waters south of 

 Barnstable, "scallops live but three years and can be exterminated in one winter by careless- 

 ness." 



In order to understand how such wholesale ruin is prevented or, rather, how, when it does 

 occur in any locality, the district is restocked, and also such reports of practical observers as that 

 from Northport, we must remind ourselves not only of what I have already said of the drifting of 

 the young, but that the scallop, unlike many of the mollusca, is not fixed to one spot, nor is it 

 even compelled, like others of its class, to glide along the bottom with slow and regular move- 

 ment; "but locomotion in this genus is rapid, and by a succession of springs or leaps." so that it 

 is often spoken of as the " dancing." The method of the scallop's activity is as follows : When it is 

 alarmed, or wishes to change its location, or regain the water after being left upon the beach by 

 the recession of the tide, it opens and energetically closes its valves, thus expelling the water from 

 the gill-cavity, the reaction shooting the creature backward. The quick shutting of the shells 

 makes a loud snap, which can be heard at a considerable distance. Thus the scallop is able to 

 rise swiftly to the surface of the water by a succession of zigzag, arrow-like darlings upward, and 

 then to slide down again in a wavering inclined line until it reaches the bottom at a distance of 

 several yards from where it started. Repetitions of this comical maneuver in progression, with 

 long rests between, carry it over long distances; and that scallops sometimes do make consider- 

 able journeys in large companies is well proved. 



"One can scarcely see a lovelier sight than that of a large number of these pretty creatures, 

 with shells of every hue from purple white to black, enlivened with shades of pink, yellow, fawn, 



