574 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



always heading out to sea. These considerations appear to warrant the theory that their breeding 

 grounds are on the off-shore shoals which skirt the coast from George's Bauks to the Florida Keys. 

 There are indications, too, that a small school of Menhaden, possibly spawn at the east end of 

 Loug Island in the very early spring. 



The fecundity of the Menhaden is very great, much surpassing that of the Shad and Herring. 

 The ovaries of a iish taken in Narragansett Bay, November 1, 1879, contained at least 150,000 eggs. 



ENEMIES. Among its enemies may be counted every predaceous animal which swims in 

 the same waters. Whales and dolphins follow the schools and consume them by the hogshead. 

 Sharks of all kinds prey upon them largely; one hundred have been taken from the stomach of 

 oue shark. All the large carnivorous fishes feed upon them. The tunny is the most destructive. 

 "I have often," writes a gentleman in Maine, "watched their antics from the masthead of my 

 vessel rushing and thrashing like demons among a school offish; darting with almost lightning 

 swiftness, scattering them in every direction, and throwing hundreds of them in the air with their 

 tails." The pollock, the whiting, the striped bass, the cod, the squeteague, and the gar-fish are 

 savage foes. The sword-fish and the bayonet-fish destroy many, rushing through the schools and 

 striking right and left with their powerful swords. The bluetish and bouito are, however, ihe 

 most destructive enemies, not even excepting man; these corsairs of the sea, not content with 

 what they eat, which is of itself an enormous quantity, rush ravenously through the closely crowded 

 schools, cutting and tearing the living fish as they go, and leaving in their wake the mangled 

 fragments. Traces of their carnage remain for weeks in the great "slicks" of oil so commonly 

 seen on smooth water in summer. Professor Baird, in his well-known and often-quoted estimates 

 of food annually consumed by the bluefish, states that probably ten thousand million fish, or twenty- 

 five million pounds, daily, or twelve hundred million million fish and three hundred thousand 

 million pounds are much below the real figures. This estimate is for the period of four months 

 in the middle of the summer and fall, and for the coast of New England only. 



Such estimates ar"e professedly only approximations, but are legitimate in their way, since 

 they enable us to appreciate more clearly the luxuriance of marine life. Applying similar methods 

 of calculation to the Menhaden, I estimate the total number destroyed annually on our coast by 

 predaceous animals at a million million of millions; in comparison with which the quantities 

 destroyed by man, yearly, sink into insignificance. 



It is not hard to surmise the Menhaden's place in nature; swarming our waters in countless 

 myriads, swimming in closely packed, unwieldy masses, helpless as flocks of sheep, near to the 

 surface and at the mercy of every enemy, destitute of means of defense and offense, their mission 

 is unmistakably to be eaten. 



In the economy of nature certain orders of terrestrial animals, feeding entirely upon vegetable 

 substances, seem intended for oue purpose to elaborate simple materials into the nitrogenous 

 tissues necessary for the food of other animals, which are wholly or in part carnivorous in their 

 diet; so the Menhaden feeding upon otherwise unutilized organic matter is pre-eminently a meat- 

 prciducing agent. Man takes from the water every jear eight or nine hundred millions of these 

 fish, weighing from two hundred to three hundred thousand tons, but his indebtedness does not 

 end here ; when he brings upon his table bluefish, bonitoes, weak-fish, sword-fish, or bass, lie has 

 before him usually Menhaden flesh in another form. 



USES. The commercial importance of the Menhaden has only lately been rightly appreciated. 

 Twenty-live \cais ago and before, it was thought to l>e of very small value. A few millions were 

 taken every year in Massachusetts Bay, Long Island Sound, and the inlets of New Jersey. A small 

 portion of these were, used for bait; a lew barrels occasionally .salted in Massachusetts to be 

 exported to the West Indies. Large quantities were plowed into the soil of the farms along the 



