


402 RAMBLES IN FLORIDA. 
rowing up or down the stream. With a scoopnet rigged 
with a long pole, an important and at many times an indis- 
pensable implement for the collector, we dipped up from 
the bed of the stream a small white bivalve shell ( Tellina), 
and a single dead specimen of the fresh-water Mussel, 
Unio* Jewettii Lea. The Floridian Unios have much lighter 
shells than most of the species found in the tributaries of 
the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The once famous British 
pearls were obtained from a species of Unio ( U. margari- 
tiferus) found in the mountain streams of Great Britain, and 
the fishery was continued till the end of the last century in 
Scotland, where the mussels (Unios) were obtained in the 
River Tay by the peasantry previous to harvest time. The 
British pearl fishery has long ceased to be remunerative. 
The fresh-water mussels must be exceedingly scarce in 
this vicinity, and in fact for many miles on the western side 
of Florida, for we found none living nor a fragment in any 
of the mounds and shell-heaps that we examined. The Por- 
tuguese and Spanish narrators of the expedition of De Soto 
have given absurd accounts of the quantities of pearls in the 
possession of the natives. It is highly probable that the 
Indians inhabiting Georgia and Alabama, at the time of and 
prior to the invasion of De Soto, lived in part upon the ani- 
mals of the various species of Unio found in the rivers of 
those states,f for "heaps of mussel shells are to be seen on 
our river banks wherever Indians used to live.” § 
It may be that the Indians referred to collected the shells 
solely for the purpose of procuring the pearls; yet the pro- 
portion of shells containing pearls is so small that when, as 
-—— in the text, "the visti es narrator says they 
RN MCN PTT 

hh cea. 
. . The river mussels are are found in the ponds and streams of all parts of the W world. 
EN In Europe the species are few, though hey a are abundant. In North America 
both species and indivi apo abound. (Woodward.) the 
i ge E rms us that OETAN of Unio valv ves may be Sen a i 
riis AP one hundred miles from its mouth, and that 
Indians as late as the years m 
Conquest ofFlorida. Ed. 1809, p. 


