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Part III. — Thirteenth Annual Report 



Binny, Kossie Island, the Scalp or Ferryden foreshore. While this 

 lack of seed was equally felt by both tenants, the Ferryden Society, on 

 whose ground the chief catchment areas are found, have suffered most. 

 As the society depends entirely on native seed mussels obtainable from 

 the lower reaches of the South Esk, the three bad spatting seasons of 

 1889, 1890, and 1891, along with the large sales of adult mussels, 

 caused their beds to become impoverished. This accounts for the less 

 favourable condition of the stock on their mussel ground. 



Dealing with the beds in order, I will notice the changes that have 

 taken place iu the different beds within the past six years. 



Ferryden and Usan Fishermen's Society. 



(1) . The Scalp is one of the best seeding areas of the society, but the 

 average quantity of seed yielded by it in recent years has not been 

 maintained. For two years after our Report, no seed was obtained from it, 

 but in the autumn of 1892 seed appeared on it, and this crop yielded 

 between 4th June and 15th July in the following year 2000 baskets, 

 and the river-bed bordering it added 2000 to this quantity, so that 

 a total of 4000 baskets of seed mussels were available, and were 

 deposited on the Inshore Bank. The seeding area of the Scalp extended 

 on the inside of the lower end to 150 yards by 50 yards, and that of the 

 middle, outer, and lower part was 200 yards by 20 yards, and extended 

 into the deep part of the river. The mussel-seed lifted from it in 1893 

 was only about half-an-inch in length, the consequence of too early trans- 

 ference from the Scalp being that half of the quantity lifted and 

 deposited on the Inshore Bank was lost. In 1894, however, 6000 baskets 

 were lifted and deposited on the Salthouse Bank, and on the lower and 

 inner elge of the Big Bank. As this was the remaining portion of the 

 large seed crop which settled in 1892 on the Scalp, the mussels had, 

 before lifting, attained a sufficient size to live and thrive after transference. 



(2) . Rossie Island. — On the shore at the Trout Shot, which was 

 distinguished as the north west bed, where the branch current from the 

 South Esk is diverted into the Inch Burn, so little seed has settled since 

 1889 as not to be worth lifting, but on the north east bed, inside the 

 lower end of the Scalp, the foreshore yielded in 1893 a fair quantity of 

 seed, the area covered being of much the same extent as that noticed in 

 the previous Report. 



(3) . Ferryden Shore of River. — The operations of the Montrose Harbour 

 Trustees, undertaken for the purpose of deepening the harbour in 1889, 

 1890, and 1891, naturally prevented the free-swimming embryos of the 

 mussels settling on the foreshore or river bank, while the dredging work 

 was in progress, or if seed did settle, it was quickly covered by the mud 

 and silt carried down and deposited by the ebb current. As soon, 

 however, as these operations ceased, seed settled after the next spatting 

 season. Indications of a crop appeared in 1892, and the first crop after 

 an interval of three years was reaped in September 1893, to the extent 

 of 2000 baskets. In 1894, 1040 baskets of seed were lifted, being 

 really the remains of the crop of 1893, and were sown on the Salthouse 

 aud Big Banks. The seed sown in 1893 was shifted to the Inch Burn 

 Bed. The area covered by seed in former times extended to about half- 

 a-mile in 1893 ; only a narrow strip of foreshore, about 300 yards long by 

 7 yards broad, carried seed mussels. Altogether, in 1893, the society 



