Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/641

 CLALLAMS CLAMECY 629 de Fuca; area, 1,720 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 408. It is watered by several streams that fall into the strait. Mount Olympus, 8,138 ft. high, the N. peak of the Olympic range, is in this county. The soil is fertile. The chief produc- tions in 1870 were 8,636 bushels of wheat, 4,435 of oats, 3,460 of barley, 33,782 of pota- toes, 1,086 tons of hay, and 19,767 Ibs. of but- ther. The value of live stock was $64,552. Capital, New Dungeness. ('LALLANS, a tribe of .Indians on the N. "W. coast of North America, who call themselves Nuskliyum. They inhabit the shores of the straits of Fuca from the Okeho river to Port Townsend, bounded by the Makahs or Classets on the west and the Chemakung on the east, and live by hunting and fishing in the rivers and' bays, their canoes not being fit for the sea. About 600 were scattered along the shore for about 100 miles in 1870, but they were dimin- ishing very rapidly. A few of them, by the treaty of Point no Point, Jan. 26, 1855, were established on the Skokomish reservation in Washington territory, but not many have ac- tually ever settled there. The Clallam lan- guage is a dialect of the Selish, but differs ma- terially from others of the same stock. CLAM, a common name for several species of bivalve shells. The largest of these, the giant clam, the tridacna gigas of Lamarck, but for- merly classed in the genus chama, is an edi- ble species found among the sheltered lagoons of coral islands, and imbedded in the coral ; the animal sometimes weighs 20 Ibs., and with the valves over 500 Ibs. Such are the valves of the specimen used for benitiers in the church of St. Sulpice, Paris. Sir Joseph Banks possessed one which weighed, one valve 285, and the other 222 Ibs. The shell is sus- ceptible of a fine polish, and is carved by the Chinese into snuft' bottles, tops of walking sticks, arid similar articles. Poets and sculp- z *< SCALE OF FEET. Giant Clam (Tridacna gigas). tors have made it the cradle of the sea goddess. The common soft clam of the northern shores is the my a arenaria ; the hard clam or qua- haug is the venus mercenaria; and the broad sea clam is the mactragigantea. The unios, anodonts, &c., of the brooks and rivers are often called fresh-water clams. The mya arenaria, by its abundance on the coast of New England, is of importance as an article of food, and is also largely used for bait in cod and haddock fishing. They frequent soft bot- toms, especially the gravelly mud of river Soft Clam (Mya arenaria) and Quahaug (Venus mercenaria). mouths, and are most abundant between low water and half-tide mark. The siphon is nei- ther head nor tail, but a double retractile tube for respiratory and feeding purposes; mantle open at the opposite end, nearest the mouth, for the extrusion of the foot, by which they burrow in the mud with considerable rapidity ; the shells are generally very hard, light-col- ored or sandy, and almost black on muddy bot- toms. With the exception of the soft mass usually called the belly, they are, especially when cooked, rather indigestible. The shells are dug up from their beds, which are exposed at low water, where they are found lying about a foot below the surface, their siphon tube projecting upward in the hole by which they communicate with the water at high tide. They are taken out of the shells, or " shucked," and salted down in barrels. About 5,000 bar- rels are put up every year for the fisheries, and are valued at from $6 to $7 each. In the early history of the Plymouth colony clams were sd^eral times the principal source of sustenance for the people. CLAMECY, a town of France, in the depart- ment of Nievre, situated at the foot of a lull at the confluence of the Yonne and the Beuvron, 38 m. N. E. of Nevers; pop. in 1866, 5,616. The parish church is a handsome building of the end of the 15th century, with a remarkable tower and fine statuary; and the chateau de Vauvert is surrounded by delightful pleasure grounds. On the bridge over the Yonne is a bronze bust of a native of Clamecy, Jean Kou- vet, who introduced the manufacture of wood rafts for the supply of Paris with fire wood, which are floated down the Yonne and Seine. The suburb across the former river is called Bethlehem, in honor of a bishop who was expelled from that city after its capture by the Saracens, and who, accompanying the count de Nevers to Clamecy, was endowed with the suburb and with a see which existed