348 



Part III. — Seventh Annual Report 



The fishermen return all except clams, oysters, Buccinum, and sometimes 

 the horse-mussel to the sea, and thus neglect an opportunity of lessening 

 the enemies of the clam. The starfish, at least, ought to he destroyed, as 

 well as such crustaceans as the hermit crabs. The latter creep with their 

 house inside of the valves of the scallop, and I have seen cases where 

 these soft-bodied crustaceans left their shell and clung on by their claws 

 to and began to devour the body of the living scallop. It is, therefore, 

 short-sighted policy of the fishermen to grant a respite to such enemies of 

 the scallop by returning them to the sea. 



Occasionally on one day as many as twenty-five to thirty boats may be 

 seen dredging for clams. From Cockenzie alone thirteen boats follow the 

 pursuit solely of dredging, and each boat has a crew of four or five men 

 and boys. Each boat dredges a quantity sufficient to supply bait to two or 

 two and a half large boats, and the daily earnings per man are about three 

 shillings on the average. Five hundred clams are required to bait a line 

 of ten hundred hooks (the fisherman's hundred hooks being one hundred 

 and twenty or six score), and each clam is enough to bait one or two or 

 sometimes three hooks. The dredgers sell the clams to the deep-sea 

 fishermen at one shilling and sixpence per five hundred, but this sale is to 

 boats belonging to the same fishing village as the dredger. The dredgers 

 do not now sell clams to other places, although some years ago the North 

 Berwick fishermen bought them. 



While the men fish and dredge, their mothers, wives, daughters, and 

 sisters carry the baskets of clams to their homes and there unshell the 

 animal, cut the body into two or three parts, and bait the hooks with 

 these pieces. After the men return from the fishing, the women are 

 engaged in selling the fish or despatching them to market, and this work 

 being accomplished, they bait the lines which are to be set next morning. 

 The smaller fishing boats set their lines daily from Monday to Saturday, 

 while the larger vessels generally proceed to the fishing banks on Mondays, 

 Wednesdays, and Fridays, returning on the same days, or it may be not 

 arriving till the following mornings. The empty shells are cast on the 

 shore, but sometimes some lazy individual under the cover of darkness 

 deposits them between the fisherman's house and the shore rather than 

 carry them a few yards farther and throw them on the shore in accordance 

 with the expressed sentiment of the community. 



In some parts of America* the law prohibits the using of oyster shells 

 (1) as manure, (2) in kilns, (3) in the manufacture of iron, (4) for road 

 making, (5) for wharf building, and it declares where shells are to be set 

 down. The same conditions are not exactly applicable to the scallops, 

 either in respect of structure of shell or in adult habit, but in the one 

 case as in the other it is necessary to have a certain amount of lime in 

 solution in the water that the animals may construct for themselves a 

 covering. Whether the lime would be sooner returned to the solution in 

 the sea by a direct transference of the emptied shells to the sea, or by 

 depositing them on the neighbouring land, especially if it were a peaty 

 land — is a question which we have not data to determine. The crystalline 

 form, in which the carbonate of lime present in the shells exists, is 

 arragonite ; with a copious supply of carbonic acid gas, such as might be 

 liberated from a peaty soil, the solid arragonite would soon go into solution 

 and be transferred by the river to the sea. It certainly would be more 

 sensible for the fishermen to return the shells to the sea than allow them 

 to lie on the shore, but if there be soil in the neighbourhood in which 

 organisms are decaying it might be preferable to use them as manure 



*The Maryland Oyster Report : Brooks, Development and Protection of Oysters. 

 Baltimore, 1884. 



