MUSSEL-GAKDENS. 307 



tepast of the G-reenlander but also, of the white bear and arctic 

 fox, are equally reckoned among the most delicate of bivalves. 



The common Mussel (Mytilus edulis), which is found in 

 the littoral zone on almost every rocky shore, is eaten in vast 

 numbers by the coast inhabitants, and carried in enormous 

 masses into the interior of the country ; it furnishes an equally 

 cheap and agreeable food, but is not easy of digestion, and some- 

 times produces symptoms of poisoning, which have been ascribed 

 to the eggs of asterias, on which it feeds 

 during the summer. In the northern coun- 

 tries it is also in great request as a bait for 

 cod, ling, rays, and other large fishes that 

 are caught by the line. In the Frith of 

 Forth alone from thirty to forty millions of 

 mussels are used for this purpose, and in 

 many places they are enclosed in gardens, 

 the ground of which is covered with large 

 stones, to which they attach themselves by , ,, 



their byssus or beard. 



It is a curious fact that the rearing of mussels should have 

 been introduced into France as far back as the year 1 235, by an 

 Irishman of the name of Walton. This man, who had been 

 shipwrecked in the Bay de l'Aiguillon, and gained a precarious 

 living by catching sea-birds, observed that the mussels, which 

 had attached themselves to the poles on which he spread his nets 

 over the shallow waters, were far superior to those that naturally 

 grow in the mud, and immediately made use of his discovery 

 by founding the first " bouchot," or mussel-park, consisting of 

 stakes and rudely interwoven branches. His example soon 

 found imitators, and, strange to say, the method of construction 

 adopted by Walton, six centuries ago, has been maintained un- 

 altered to the present day. It may give some idea of the 

 immense resources that might be obtained from so many utterly 

 neglected lagunes when we hear that the fishermen of l'Aiguillon, 

 although they sell three hundredweight of mussels for the very 

 low sum of five francs, or four shillings, annually export or send 

 them into the interior to the amount of a million or twelve 

 hundred thousand francs. 



The praise which Pliny bestowed on the oyster, calling it the 

 palm or glory of the table, is still re-echoed by thousands of 



