590 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



dozen. Smaller sizes bring 48 cents and 36 cents per dozen. During unusually low tides in winter 

 clams of extraordinary size are obtained at Guilford, below the zone ordinarily uncovered by the 

 tide ; these often weigh a pound or more, and sell for about $1.25 per dozen ; occasionally the 

 weight is as much as a pound and a half, and the shells become 6 or 8 inches in length." In 1880 

 1 visited Guilford, but heard that no clams were now dug there of large size, and that all were 

 sold by the bushel at a price not greater than elsewhere. Verrill gives the prices of clams in 

 Connecticut, about 1870, as follows : " The ordinary long clams of small and moderate sizes 

 bring 95 cents, $1.25, and $2 per bushel at wholesale; these retail in our markets at 50 cents to 

 75 cents per peck, the smallest sizes being cheapest, while the reverse is the case with the round 

 clams." The total product of Connecticut, home-consumption and export, will no doubt amount 

 to 75,000 bushels (and probably much more) every year. 



At Bridgeport, of late, serious attempts at clam-planting have been made by Hawley, Lewis, 

 and other oyster growers, in spite of immense opposition from the shore people of the suburbs, 

 who, as usual, bitterly and blindly opposed any cultivation of marine products. Privilege to 

 ground was first secured under the general State law, and afterwards, in one case at least, bought 

 outright in order to leave no doubt as to right. This beginning required a long time, during 

 which, as one man expressed it to me, he " fit the subject from Tophet to wayback !" 



At first small clams, which were bought at 50 cents a bushel for the purpose, were regu- 

 larly planted in the sand between tide lines by punching a hole and pushing the young mollusk 

 down into it. This was found too slow and laborious work, however, and the method of plowing 

 the seed in was undertaken. After many trials of all sorts of plows and cultivators, surface and 

 subsoil, and proving them unadapted to the turning of the dense, wet, heavy mixture of sand and 

 mud, Mr. Wheeler Hawley succeeded in inventing a light plow, having a thin, narrow, steel 

 mold-board, which did the work satisfactorily. It was three years after the first considerable 

 planting of seed when I was there, and the whole beach, for half an acre in extent, was as full of 

 the holes indicating clam-burrows as a vast colander. When you dug down you found the mol- 

 lusks shoulder to shoulder and piled on top of one another. This was manifestly too many, yet 

 they seemed to be doing well, except that the growth was slow. The owner was engaged in thin- 

 ning them out, and increasing the area of his ground by transplanting. This gentleman says that 

 the clam in Long Island Sound spawns in June, grows only a little during the winter months, and 

 increases in size so slowly that the planter must wait four or five years for his first crop. This 

 attained, however, he will find his whole space " saturated " with young clams derived from his 

 transplanted stock, and can draw almost endlessly upon his "bank" as each selling season comes 

 round. I know no branch of mollnsk culture likely to prove more remunerative than this so long 

 as it is not overdone. 



