TBE SHELL-FISH OF THE COAST. 37 



few inches in our sand-clam, in other forms it con- 

 siderably surpasses a foot, and, indeed, in a species 

 from the Californiau coast {Glycimeris gmerosd) it 

 reaches a full yard, with a thickness somewhat ex- 

 ceeding that of a stout broom-handle. The sand- 

 clam, which is abundant almost everywhere in the 

 North in the tidal zone — estuaries, muddy inlets, 

 and sandy shores — is a broadly distributed species, 

 extending its range eastward to the British Isles 

 and the continent of Europe. In the [KTew England 

 markets it is a common article of sale, but in New 

 York and Philadelphia its place is almost entirely 

 taken by the hard-shell clam or quahog. The In- 

 dians appear to have been very fond of these clams, 

 which were known to them as Sickishuog. John 

 Winthrop, in a communication made to the Royal 

 Society of England in 1634, thus describes the 

 species : " Clams — white. Their broth is most ex- 

 cellent in all intermitting fevers, consumption, etc. 

 These clams feed only on sand." 



On the New Jersey coast the sand-clam is some- 

 times called, after the Indian name, ' maninose' 

 (corrupted to ' nannynose'), and, to distinguish it 

 from the quahog, the ' soft-shell clam.' 



It frequently happens as the result of a storm that 

 large cakes of a stiff gray or blue clay, more or less 

 firmly matted together by vegetable fibres, and in 

 some localities having a peaty aspect, are cast upon 

 the beach. These masses are the abiding-place of 

 great numbers of an interesting boring mollusk 

 known to conchologists as Petricola (PI. 2, Fig. 20), 

 the ' stone-dweller,' which has forced its way in by 



4 



