412 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



the dish; or they fry the cockles with oatmeal and 

 chives, or oatmeal alone ; they also make of them an 

 excellent and nutritious soup."* 



Since oysters have become so scarce and dear, cockles 

 have assumed a much greater importance than heretofore, 

 and they not unfrequently do duty for oysters both in 

 patties and sauce. A quart of cockles costing 2d. will 

 contain about 84 cockles, weighing one pound fourteen 

 ounces. The meat of them will weigh six ounces, there- 

 fore the price of cockle meat is about 5^d. per pound. 



There are at least 100 carts (with six or seven people 

 to a cart) employed collecting cockles in Morecambe 

 Bay. The cockles are sold at 5s. or 6s. a box. There 

 are about 70 quarts in a box of cockles. They are 

 retailed there at about Id. a quart, there being 25 to 30 

 cockles in a quart. The total quantity of cockles sent 

 away by railway from Furness and some other stations 

 in 1877 was 2,254 tons, more than one-half from Cark 

 station. Cockles are worth about £5 a ton. Hence the 

 above quantity may be valued at £11,000. This does 

 not include local consumption. Thirty-three per cent, 

 may probably be added to this estimate for local con- 

 sumption, which would make the entire value about 

 £14,000 a year from about fifty miles of coast, and the 

 produce of the south side of the bay is 3,000 tons now. 

 A sack of cockles weighing 1^ cwt. is worth about 2s. 

 There is a great cockle fishery in the bays near Car- 

 marthen. There are 500 or 600 families dependent on 

 it, and at only 10s. per week per family it must be worth 

 at least £15,000 a year. 



The Italian markets are well supplied all the year 

 round with cockles, especially the following species : C. 

 rusticum, C. tuberculatum, C. edule, Linn., and C. codiense, 

 Een. They are preferred in the winter; in some 

 localities they become large and well flavoured. 



Oysters. — One of the most appreciated of the mollusks 

 has always been the common oystei". From very ancient 



* " The Edible Mollusks," p. 36. 



