1004 The Scallop and its Fishery, [ December, 
enough. or at any rate be unable to spawn again, and so fail to 
start a new generation. 
Similarly an unusual attack by natural enemies, or excessive 
dredging by men, might in one season extirpate the scallops of a 
whole bed or bay. To its active powers of movement and its 
migratory habits, the scallop must mainly trust for preservation as 
a race, and to the fortuitous drifting in of young upon rafts of 
sea-weed most depleted localities chiefly look for rehabilitation. 
Whatever the explanation, the supply has certainly decreased 
4 along our coast during the past thirty years, even though at cer- 
tain points—as in the Peconics—there seems no diminution. The 
huge, smooth-shelled Pecten tenuicostatus of the North, as big as 
a fruit plate, which formerly abounded on the coast of Maine, has 
now become so rare as to be a prize in the cabinet of the conchol- 
ogist rather than an edible commodity—a result unquestionably 
due to over-greedy catching, and an effective reply to those men 
who told me that they thought the more the scallop beds were 
raked the more plentiful the mollusks became. Long Island 
sound no longer affords profitable fishing, and the depletion there 
is attributed by the local fishermen to the fact that in culling their 
dredge-loads the little ones were not thrown back. The same 
story belongs to New York bay and much of the New Jersey 
coast. The irregularity in respect to plenitude, and also of the 
size and fatness of these mollusks in the three localities—Buz- 
zard’s bay, Cowesett bay (R. I.) and Long Island—where they 
are still regularly taken, is steadily complained of. 
' Scallops are caught by hand-dredging from small sail-boats. 
The dredges are about thirty inches in width, have a scraper-blade 
upon the bottom, and in favorable weather several may be thrown 
over from each boat. In shoal water an iron-framed dip-net 1s 
sometimes used on calm days. It is pretty hard work, and en- 
tails exposure to very severe weather. 
_ The only edible part of the scallop is the squarish mass of muscle 
(the adductor) which holds the shells together, and this part 1s 
. skillfully cut out by “ openers,” who have their houses at the land- 
ing places where the dredgers take their cargoes to be sold. It 
is the buyer, not the dredger, who “opens” or “cuts out” the 
meat and prepares it for market. In some places men alone are 
ployed in this work—at others women and girls for the most 
they will earn from eighty cents to $1.25 4 day. The 
