THE CLAM.—Amongst the edible shellfish found on the coasts of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, the Great Clam, as it is there styled (_Lutraria maxima_), or the Otter-shell of conchologists, is by far the most valuable. Clams are one of the staple articles of winter food on which all Indian tribes in a great measure depend who inhabit the north-west coast of America. The clam to the Indians is a sort of molluscous cereal, that they gather and garner during the summer months; and an outline sketch of this giant bivalve’s habits and style of living, how captured, and what becomes of it after being made a prisoner, may be interesting; its habits, and the uses to which, if not designed, it is at least appropriated, being generally less known than its minute anatomy. Clams attain an immense size; I have measured shells eight inches from the hinge to the edge of the valve. We used them as soap-dishes at our headquarters on Vancouver Island. The clam has a very wide range, and is thickly distributed along the mainland and Vancouver Island coasts; his favourite haunts are the great sandbanks, that run out sometimes over a mile from the shore. The rise and fall of the tide is from thirty to forty feet, so that at low-water immense flats or beaches, consisting of mud and sand, are laid bare. There is nothing poetical about the clam, and its habits are anything but clean; grovelling in the mud, and feeding on the veriest filth it can find, appears to constitute the great pleasure of its life; the stomach is a kind of dusthole, into which anything and everything finds ready admission. Its powers of digestion must be something wonderful; I believe clams could sup on copper tacks, and not suffer from nightmare. Spending the greater part of its time buried about two feet deep, the long syphon, reaching to the surface, discovers its whereabouts, as the ebbing tide leaves the mud, by continually squirting up small jets of water, about six or eight inches high. The sand flats dry, out marches an army of squaws (Indian women), as it is derogatory to the dignity of a man to dig clams. With only a small bit of skin or cedar-mat tied round the waist, the women tramp through the mud, a basket made from cedar-root in one hand, and in the other a bent stick about four feet long.