THE CLAM FISHERIES. 609 



England Prospect" (163d), says that along Nahant beach the sea, "after storms casts up greate 

 store of great Clammes, which the Indians, taking out of their shels, carry home in baskets;" 

 also of "clammes as big as a halfe penny loaf, which are greate dainties amongst the natives." 

 It is evident that this is the species referred to. Following their example, the Massachusetts 

 people have always eaten them to some extent, and one Boston merchant told me that a few 

 years ago he was able to sell fifteen barrels a year, but that now there was no call for them. 

 They were worth $3.50 a barrel at the beach and sold for $4 a barrel in Boston. On Cape Cod they 

 are eaten to some extent when washed up on the "backside" of the cape, all of the mollusk being 

 thrown away except the "cheeks;" precisely what this portion represented however, I was unable 

 to learn. This is a traditional custom, as I was assured in conversation with an old Provincetown 

 man : " I hearn old folks say," he explained " yeou mustn't eat none of it, 'cept the cheeks. They 

 pretend to say the rest is poison, or suthin." 



I suggested that at Lynn the whole animal was eaten, and said perhaps the people there were 

 tougher. " Well, I dunno," he replied, " most all the folks at Swampscott are Cape Codders." 

 They are occasionally eaten in the lower towns of the cape, too, and on Long Island, where the 

 south shore is frequently strewed with them. Mr. Mather makes a note of this as follows: 



" It is very large, and would afford a cheap and wholesome stock for soup, if the American 

 poor did not always want the very best of everything. We know a poor man in Brooklyn who, 

 when out of work, walks down to Coney Island and gets a bag full with which he rides back on 

 the street cars, and, said he, ' I can get clams enough to make good soup for my big family for a 

 week, by taking one day, and 15 cents for car fare.' Here is a text for a political economist. 

 We have oiten said that there is more good food wasted in the United States than in any other 

 country, but as population increases this will remedy itself. At present our people are too proud 

 to buy anything but the choicest things in market, or even to ride second class; but in a few 

 more generations the fishermen of Long Island Sound won't say with indignation, of a truly fine 

 fish which graces the tables of the best in the land in Europe and some parts of New York, 'No 

 sir ; I never was poor enough to eat sturgeon.' We repeat, sea-clams make good soup ; we have 

 eaten it and pretend to know the various grades of goodness in salt-water clams and oysters." 



They rarely appear in New York markets, and I suppose their general rejection as food is 

 due partly to their inaccessibility, partly to prejudice against them, but chiefly from the fact that 

 they are likely to prove tough, and of a " sweetish " flavor, disliked by many persons in comparison 

 with the abundant oysters, quahaugs, and Mya clams. 



In New Jersey, they occasionally serve as manure, being now and then thrown up on the 

 outer beaches in vast wind-rows, sometimes 2 or 3 feet deep, and so dense that they may be 

 shoveled up. There are records of many such a visitation, the latest of which, perhaps, was 

 during the winter of 1877-'78, when the farmers along the shore from Atlantic City to Cape May 

 carted away hundreds of wagon-loads of the washed-out flesh of these mollusks and spread it on 

 their fields. They were utilized also as food for hogs and poultry, and as bait. The same was 

 true at Barnegat, and, Mr. Lockwood tells me, has happened frequently near Sandy Hook. This 

 great bivalve is principally serviceable then, as bait, and as such it occupies considerable time 

 and attention everywhere along the coast, briefly and at irregular intervals. On Cape Cod, 

 nevertheless that great depot for all sorts of marine industries the fishery for sea-clams takes 

 on a commercial importance. In the course of Mr. True's investigations of the shore-interests of 

 that interesting and amphibious corner of the United 3tates, he learned that at Dennisport, in 1879, 

 there were about two hundred and forty dories procuring sea-clams within a mile and a half of 

 the village, half of which were owned in Dennisport, and the rest in Harwich, Chatham, West 

 SEC. v, VOL. ii 39 



