454 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



There can be no justification for the wholesale con- 

 demnation of a shell-fish area on the results of a 

 bacteriological analysis carried on by Houston's 

 " flaginac " methods, unless this analysis has been 

 accompanied by a rigorous survey of the area from which 

 the samples were taken, under all possible conditions, 

 and by a critical consideration of the epidemiological 

 evidence available. Yet, the experience of the Com- 

 mittee is now that several important shell-fish beds have 

 been condemned by public health authorities merely as 

 the result of the bacteriological analyses of samples of 

 mussels obtained from fish-shops or from market stalls. 

 It may be that these analyses were adequate ones, but, 

 so far as I know, the details of the methods employed 

 have not been communicated to the Committee. It is 

 not even certain that the samples in every case were 

 really obtained from the areas implicated. So far as I 

 know, the mere statement of the vendors that they were 

 supplied with mussels from such and such localities is 

 accepted without seeking for further proof. In one such 

 case that has come within my own experience the sample 

 condemned was said to have been obtained from a 

 locality in North Wales. Yet at the time when this 

 sample was analysed the mussel fishery had ceased in 

 the locality in question because of the statutory close 

 season. It might be urged that these mussels were fished 

 illegally during the close season, and while trippers, or 

 casual shell-fish gatherers, may occasionally take mussels 

 from the foreshore at this time, it is clearly impossible 

 (at least it will seem so to those who know the local 

 conditions of the fishery) that mussels should be sent 

 away by railway during this period. In such cases the 

 Local Authority acts, no doubt, in perfect good faith ; 

 still, one must demand legal proof of the collection of 



