MINOR SHELL-FISH.
T"pleadings in the action brought by the municipality of Colchester to assert a right to certain oyster-beds on the foreshore showed that some form of protection had been accorded to Essex oysters since the days of St. Osyth. But valuable as the oyster is, there are several kinds of English shell-fish, less excellent, but much esteemed both in this country and abroad by those who know their merits, which deserve a greater degree of attention and protection from waste than is now accorded to them. Writing twenty-five years ago, Mr. James Bertram, the author of one of the most interesting and practical handbooks on marine fisheries ever published,* drew attention to the importance of these minor fisheries, and the need of protection for the shell-fish, not only as a form of food, but as the bait which captures tens of thousands of tons of deep-sea fish in the line fishery. Yet at the present date the mussel is, we believe, the only species which is either protected by law, or "cultivated," even in the rudest manner, by the long-shore fishermen of this country. The minor shell-fish which take rank among the marketable commodities of our coasts are the scallop, or "queen," the mussel, the cockle, the razor-fish, and at a distance marked off by the rigorous social dis- tinctions which attach to certain kinds of food, the peri- winkle and the whelk. Clams are not known in this country ; and the joys of an American "clam-bake," when a dozen families combine for an outing to catch clams, and then bake them in a big sand pie with potatoes and "soft corn," and eat the three ingredients "all hot," with the flavour of clam diffused impartially, are denied to us ; but much the same result can be obtained by forming a party to dig cockles, and bake them in their shells on hot stones upon the beach.
• The Harvest of the Sea. London : John Murray. Scallops are so attractive in appearance that they have for some years been commonly sold in the best London fish-shops. They are far the largest edible English shell-fish—among which the crustaceans, such as lobsters, crabs, and sea-cray- fish, are not properly classed — but good as they are, they are by no means the best. The mussel, so much esteemed in France, and so neglected in this country by the very classes who are usually keenly on the look out for new forms of fish or fowl to vary the daily bill-of-fare, deserves the second, if not the first, place. Cockles, of which we have a word to say later, are naturally "inferior animals" when compared with the mussel. The cockle cannot be improved. We must take him or leave him for what he is worth. But the mussel, like the oyster, can be taken when no- larger than flax-seed, transplanted, fattened, stored, and im- proved. It is almost capable of domestication, and improves in shape, flavour, and quality under human care more quickly than Virgil's beans, bees, or olives under the vis humana, which he, like every other good husbandman, deemed so essential to success. It is very seldom that any one on our coasts takes the trouble to improve mussels. They are just scraped off the beds in shallow water, or from the piles and posts of jetties, and used as bait for fishing. As they are required in almost countless numbers for this purpose alone —nearly five million mussels were used yearly by one fishing village in Scotland in baiting their cod and haddock lines— some effort has now been made to regulate the " take " upon the beds. A license, proportionate in cost to the size of the boats engaged, has to be taken out by fishermen taking mussels from the " scalps " off parts of the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coasts, and the smallest mussels have to be returned to the bed. But mussel-farming for profit is very rarely seen, though there is a steady demand for fattened mussels in London, mainly on the part of the French and the well-to- do Italian population, who attach great importance to is maule as an indispensable luxury of diet. In the few places where the industry is carried on, though with little regard to economy of labour, it is so profitable, that one wonders why it has not extended elsewhere. The fish are collected in the first instance by small smacks, the crews of which sail to the or "scalps," and rake up the immature fish at low tide from the shingles to which they are attacked. They are then sold to the owners of the "mussel lays," or fattening-grounds, where in the course of twelve months the
grow so fast that each bushel of mussels laid down fills three bushels when they are taken up to be sold. The culture is most primitive. The young mussels are simply laid down on the mud of a tidal creek, with sufficient shingle scattered among them for the shells to attach themselves to so as to. prevent them being washed away by the tide. Soon the whole " lay " becomes a matted bed of mussels. These suck in the " sea-soup " which passes over them at every tide, and wax fat exceedingly. The profits made may be judged from the rent paid for the privilege of laying the fish on one of the fattening- beds. The course of this creek is sixty yards wide. This is divided into transverse strips, twenty-two yards wide, and each of these is leased for £3 a year One particularly "fattening " corner, where two creeks join, is let for £6 a year. Yet this method of mussel culture, the profits of which admit of such high rentals, is opposed to the practice of the French boucholiers, who have brought their system to such perfection that the foreshore of one village, Esnandes, near La Rochelle, produced in 1873, when it was visited by Mr. Bertram, a sum of £50,000 per annum, an amount which, it is stated, has now increased to £70,000. The mussel culture of Esnandes was invented by a shipwrecked Irishman named Walton, who- set up fowling - nets on the mud, and devised a " mud- boat " to reach them. He observed that the posts on which his nets were set were covered, first with mussel-spat and then with young mussels. These, being always covered with water, and raised high above the mud, had a far finer flavour than the common mussels. Walton soon decided to plant more posts, not to support wild-fowl nets, but to attract the mussels, and from this primitive beginning the mussed industry of Esnandes has sprung. The mud-banks are planted with stakes as thick as a vineyard, and the fish are constantly transplanted from one set of piles to another, in order to gain the full benefit of the tide and food best suited to their growth. There is no rent to pay for the mussel-farms, as there is for the Whitstable oyster-beds, for they are on a. tidal sea, like the grey, muddy bight of Weston-super-Mare, and the mussel-spat has not to be purchased like oyster- brood, but appears spontaneously like grains of seed on the posts.
The cockle-fishery, though it ranks below the industry of mussel culture, because cockles cannot be "cultivated." is far more popular on the coast than the more artistic occupation of mussel-farming. It is a sand-bank fishery, and perhaps the most primitive form of sport surviving,—older even than coracle-fishing, to judge by the piles of cockle-shells found near prehistoric settlements. No one probably has computed bow many thousands of acres of " oockle-strand " underlie -the surface-sands of Morecambe Bay, the Wash, the Welsh .estuaries, and those of the South Devon coast, or the annual value of the fish sent to London, Manchester, and Birmingham. They are out of season from May to August ; but except in those months the cockle-fishing goes on without interruption. In the Wash, carts are driven for miles on to the sand to bring back the cockles, the last part of the journey being often a dangerous race against the towing tide. Evidence of the solid merits of cockles may be seen in the fact that wherever found they are locally in high esteem for the table. There is no dish in which oysters are commonly used as an ingredient in which the cockle is not a useful substitute. In some estuaries the " winkle " fishery goes on side by side with cockle-gathering. In Brading Haven, before its reclamation, were some of the best cockle- strands and " winkle " grounds in the South of England. The fishermen used to gather them in immense quantities at low tide, especially on certain banks near which a submarine spring of fresh water bubbled up. As the tide fell, the men would bale up this fresh water, which then displaced the salt, and boil their periwinkles in the boats. Each week a " winkle- boat " left the harbour and sailed direct to Billingsgate, where the sea-snails were disposed of at a handsome profit. They were known in the market as "Old Church winkles," from the fact that at the mouth of Brading Haven stands the ruined tower of old St. Helen's Church, a sea-mark well known to sailors. Last, but not least, of the minor shell-fish are the whelks. These are a valuable and certain source of livelihood to the East Coast fishermen. Thousands of tons are taken in " cages" like iron lobster-pots, and sold either for bait for the cod. fishery or for the London market. Four pounds a week is easily earned by two men owning a boat, during the greater part of the year, and the supply does not appear to diminish. 'Cockles, on the other hand, and, on some parts of the coast, the mussels, are decreasing in numbers. Some of the cockle-strands are said to be "poisoned." In others the cookies have migrated or have been over-fished. Scallops grow annually scarcer in our shallow waters, but the catch in -the Bay of Caen, on the opposite side of the Channel, is so great that the supply will be maintained for many years.
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