SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 487 



taken for human food, and should these grounds again 

 become set with shell-fish, gathering these ought to 

 be forbidden. 



So also the mussels at Bare, on the foreshore, must 

 be subject to risks of pollution too serious to admit of 

 them being regarded as suitable articles of food — at least 

 so long as the present outfalls at Thornton Poad and at 

 Bare continue to be used. A glance at the chart is 

 sufficient to establish this conclusion — at least that is 

 my opinion. 



The conditions at Stone Skear require more careful 

 consideration. This mussel ground is about half-a-mile 

 from the nearest outfalls — Thornton Road and Bare, but 

 it showed (in November last) far less bacteriological 

 contamination than I expected. Probably the dilution 

 of the sewage discharging from these outfalls is so great 

 that the contamination may be neglected. At any rate, 

 both this ground, and that at Bare Ayre Point, might be 

 regarded as clean, if only these two sewers were joined up 

 to the main system. 



I think there can be little doubt that the contamina- 

 tion of the mussels at Hey sham Shears may be neglected. 

 These shears are at a distance of from one to two miles 

 from the main sewer outfall, and they are in the open sea. 

 The ebb-tide water flowing over them does not come 

 entirely from Morecambe Channel, but, even at low 

 water, a large volume of water coming down from 

 Grange Channel sweeps over the skears and must dilute 

 enormously the already diluted sewage coming down 

 from Seldom Seen Skear. One cannot visit these skears 

 without realising that the danger of sewage contamina- 

 tion is largely imaginary, and that the mussels taken 

 from them are to be regarded as suitable articles of food. 



So far as the analyses made during this year go, they 



