REPORT ON THE STUDY AND APPRAISAL, ETC. 5 
2 
cinders, ashes, logs, decaying wood, bark, sawdust, as were 
often encountered, have a distinctly injurious effect upon fish 
when dumped into the water. This is important, when it be 
remembered that fish carry the larval young of the mussels 
about with them. Such a combination may account for the 
scarcity of young shells in the beds, or tend to render the en- 
vironment a more difficult one to combat, whatever be the 
more direct reason. 
As the situation is today, the sand bars created by the dams 
may, following certain conditions such as flood or drought, 
harbor mussels in sufficient abundance as to make their tak- 
ing by hand fairly profitable. Characteristically abundant 
and commercial species found on such sand bars are the 
three-ridge and blue-point, (Quadrula olicata and undulata), 
pig-toe, (Quadrula undata), pocketbook, (Lampsilis ventri- 
cosa), with lesser quantities of the pimple back, (Quadrula 
pustulosa), hickory nut, (Qbovaria ellipsis), and monkey 
face, (Quadrula metanevra). Most of these shells, especially 
the pocket books, were of an excellent quality for button 
making. 
In many cases the mussels, especially the younger ones in- 
habiting the sand bars, were observed to be dying in large 
numbers as the result of their inability to move with the 
water as it fell from the flood stages. The utilization of 
the mussel resources below Lake Pepin therefore seems to 
demand that the mussels be taken from the sandbars by hand 
when desirable for commercial purposes, and that the strand- 
ed animals be given the conserving care such as fish receive 
in rescue work. By way of experiment, the party stocked 
two sections of an area in which mussels were nearly absent, 
but in which conditions seemed quite favorable, with younger 
shells of various species, collected from the sand bars, where, 
by the way, shells are more abundantly taken by hand than 
from the bottom by crowfoot bars. 
While the sloughs are dammed off from the river for the 
ultimate purpose of draining them, they are as rich, if not 
richer in mussels than the main river. Excellent examples 
of sloughs with a richer fauna are the Belvedere and Straight’ 
Sloughs, and the West Newton Chute. In all these, shells 
were collected by hand or by crowfoot bars. Work 
