SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 463 



and with regard to the St. Anne's bed : " Needless to 

 say, the St. Anne's mussels should not be eaten at any 

 period of the year, and numerous cases of enteric fever 

 have been ascribed to these molluscs at Blackpool and 

 elsewhere." 



(5) The Roosebeck Mussel Scar. 



This mussel bed was examined by both Mr. Scott 

 and myself some years ago, and I reported on some 

 bacteriological analyses of these mussels to the Scientific 

 Sub-Committee at the meeting in February, 1913. A 

 further analysis of the Roosebeck mussels, by precisely 

 the same methods as in the cases of the Welsh estuarine 

 areas, is, however, given here for purposes of comparison. 

 This is an uncontaminated mussel bed, and the 

 bacteriological results are in strict accordance with what 

 an inspection shows. The mean number of organisms 

 contained in 1 mussel was 6, which may be regarded as 

 quite a negligible quantity. Thus we have the 

 comparison : — 



Roosebeck mussels : mean number of sewage bacteria 



per mussel = 6. 

 Aberdovey mussels : mean number of sewage bacteria 



per mussel = 20,250. 



(6) Preliminary Bacteriological Analyses. 



The following tables give the results of counts of 

 colonies of "sewage bacteria" obtained in the analyses 

 referred to above. The colonies are such as may be 

 presumed to have had origin in domestic sewage. In all 

 the mussel analyses a number of these colonies have been 

 isolated and cultivated in a number of test-media with 

 a view to their more precise identification. This work 



