364 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ing Winyah Bay. 12 In most cases the fishermen were from northern 

 localities, going south to engage in the industry before the season 

 opened in Delaware Bay, and sending their catch to the Savannah 

 market, or to New York and Philadelphia, via Charleston or 

 Savannah. 13 



In other localities, however, the sturgeon was somewhat slower in 

 being rid of the strong prejudice against it, to which was added in 

 many cases the bitter enmity of the fishermen because of the damage 

 done to their nets by this powerful fish. The salmon fishermen of the 

 Columbia Eiver despised it as a worthless, destructive fish, and for 

 many years whenever taken in the nets a sturgeon was usually killed or 

 thrown out on the bank. Along the shores of the Great Lakes sturgeon 

 were not used very much for food until after smoking of the flesh 

 began at Sandusky about 1860, experiments in making caviar having 

 been tried at that place five years earlier. 14 Before that time they had 

 been so little valued that when it was possible to sell them they would 

 not bring over 10 cents apiece, 15 while in most cases they were regarded 

 as a nuisance, usually being taken out and thrown away. As late as 

 1872, in fact, sturgeon were taken in great abundance every autumn 

 in the nets of the Green Bay region and were almost universally pulled 

 into the boats and consigned to the offal heap. 16 From Virginia, also, 

 comes the statement that less than three decades ago the roe was 

 thrown away or used for fish bait, and such great quantities of meat 

 were taken in the Potomac that there was absolutely no sale, the fish 

 being piled like cordwood on the shore and farmers called on to cart 

 them away for fertilizer. 17 In the face of these conditions, however, 

 the sturgeon fishery by 1880 had become an important branch of the 

 fishing industry in the Middle and South Atlantic States and in the 

 Great Lakes. Successful smoking of the flesh and its use as a good 

 substitute for smoked halibut had overcome much of the early prejudice 

 and established a small, but growing, market for sturgeon meat, while 

 the manufacture of isinglass from the bladder and, most potent of all, 

 the increasing European demand for caviar, aided materially in estab- 

 lishing the industry on a profitable basis. Instead of being thrown out 

 in heaps to rot as before, the multitudes of sturgeon in the Great 

 Lakes were now turned to profit by the fishermen. Where in 1860 the 

 sturgeon had supported only a tottering industry, confined largely to 

 the Delaware Eiver region, the year 1880 marked an industry wide- 

 spread in its range and yielding nearly 12,000,000 pounds of products 

 annually. 



"Goode, Vol. V., Sec. 1, pp. 617-625. 



"Goode, Vol. II., p. 506. 



14 U. S. Fish Commission Report, 1887, p. 249. 



18 Loc. cit., p. 263. 



19 U. S. Fish Commission Report, 1872-73, p. 10. 

 17 Fishing Gazette, January 20, 1906, p. 56. 



