* 
one engaged in collecting for a manufacturer. Such young specimens would 
not furnish pearls of any value, and, as a rule, they are too small to be used 
with profit for buttons. 
Certain regulations might be made in regard to dredging, raking up, and 
otherwise disturbing the beds of mussels. J. F. Boeffle, president of the 
principal button factory at Muscatine, Iowa, who has given the subject 
much attention, believes that the disturbing of the beds at the time when 
‘the animals are loaded down with young is a cause of much injury and he 
is no doubt right. When the gills are filled with embryos they often pro- 
trude when the shell is open, and if disturbed they suddenly close the shell, 
sometimes cutting off large portions of the ovisacs. 
Something, no doubt, might be done. in the way of mussel] farming, just 
as oyster-growing is made profitable. The great mussel shoals on the Ten- 
nessee river, reaching from Florence Ala., for 20 miles up stream, are lit- 
erally blocked with mussel shells. Such places, if kept under control and 
properly worked ought to prove immensely profitable, and they never need 
be exhausted or even reduced. 
In his report for .1908, the United States Commissioner of Fisheries says: 
An important biological investigation during the past year has been ad- 
dressed to the distribution and habits of pearly mussels in the Mississippi 
Valley and to experiments in mussel culture. The pearl-button industry has 
$2,000,000 capital invested and produces an annual output of $6,000,000, but 
the supply of fresh-water mussels which constitutes its raw material is be- 
coming rapidly exhausted, and the industry will cease to exist unless reliéf 
is afforded. The Bureau is endeavoring to locate all possible sources of 
supply and to determine the extent of the depletion that has occurred, is 
making studies of the habits of the mussel in order to recommend neces- 
sary regulation of the fishery, and is experimenting in artificial propogation. 
The culture experiments have been successful almost from the start and 
work is even now being conducted on a scale promising practical results. 
A great deal of this work can be conducted with little additional expense in 
connection with the rescue of fish from overflowed lands, which already 
constitutes an important work of the Bureau in the mississippi Valley. 
