The principal objection to an enforced interruption of the fishery during a period of months is that it deprives the mussel fishermen of the right to earn a living by their profession during a portion of each year. This objection has real weight, and should be overborne only by decided advantages to be gained from a closed season. _Restricting the methods of fishery._--The principal implements for taking mussels are the crowfoot bar, the rake, the fork, the tongs or scissors fork, the dip net, and the dredge. These several pieces of apparatus are variously adapted to conditions of depth, rate of current, and character of bottom, as well as to the aptitudes and customs of the fishermen. Before a method should be prohibited it should be known that it can be replaced by one of the more suitable methods, or else that it is so positively injurious as to require its elimination. The only implement of capture against which complaints are generally made is the crowfoot hook, but this is the only method in general use which is adapted for taking mussels in the deeper water, and it is probably in more common use than any other method. Perhaps in time improvements upon this hook will be adopted to lessen its injuriousness, or other methods capable of replacing it will be better known. In the light of present conditions it would work an unnecessary hardship upon a very large number of fishermen to prevent its use, especially when it appears that the protection of the mussels can be accomplished by methods more equitable to all concerned. Still other measures have sometimes been advanced looking to the limitation of the number of shellers to be permitted to work within a given territory or to the leasing of shelling rights. Since such proposals have not yet been offered in connection with any properly worked-out plan by which serious injustice would be avoided and the interest of the public safeguarded they may be dismissed with the remark that it is not simply the protection of mussels that is desired but the protection of the mussels for human use without interference with common human rights. The absence of inherent wrong in an idea does not commend it if it carries within itself the seeds of its own defeat by a method of application, or a want of method, that allows opportunity for manifestly unjust and intolerable conditions to arise. There remains to deal with the necessity for the two measures that are advocated and to discuss the methods of application. This can be more adequately done in distinct sections. SIZE LIMIT--NECESSITY AND APPLICATION. EXHAUSTIVE NATURE OF THE FISHERY.