50 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



but, kuowing the captain and knowing that, where I was fishing, the fish 

 were in one body of about ten miles square, I have every reason to 

 believe Captain Clifford's statement. 



I honestly believe if the fishermen of Maine had had the exj^erience 

 in using the i^urse-seine in 1865 they have now, they would have 

 taken out of the ocean between one and two millions of dollars' worth of 

 wealth in pogies that season. I caught that summer upwards of forty 

 thousand dollars' worth with one purse-seine. That body of pogies left 

 the 1st of October, and worked gradually to the southeast. Everybody 

 must admit that that large body of fish have lived and passed away long 

 before this, as far as we know, without the least benefit to mankind, and 

 I also believe that while the jDresent fishing law is in force it will be the 

 means of depriving the fishermen of Maine from taking hundreds of 

 thousands of dollars' worth of fish from the ocean, that are about to pass 

 away without being brought into use. There are two schools or families 

 of pogies that usually come on the coast of Maine. The first follows 

 the coast of Virginia along the shores to Maine, generally going into 

 the rivers and bajs. They usually get there about the 1st of June. 

 They are the same kind of menhaden that we catch in the waters west 

 of Cape Cod. They resemble Figure 1 in the Report of 1876-'77. About 

 the middle of July to the 1st of August (and sometimes later) we have 

 a school of pogies come inshore from the ocean, from a southeast direc- 

 tion, and make their first appearance to the east of Monhegan Island. 

 These fish are very large and fat ; resemble Fig. 3 in the Eeport of 1876- 

 '77. They work gradually to the west, sometimes as far as Wood Island. 

 These fish are never found to have any spawn in them. They generally 

 leave the coast of Maine about the 20th of September. After cruising 

 about some two or three days after they leave, and finding no fish, we 

 start at once for Proviucetown, Mass., expecting to fall in with them 

 there ; but we always find the pogies, that we get there, with spawn in 

 them about 3 inches long. It seems that they cannot be the pogies that 

 left the coast of Maine, as we never find the large fat fish in Maine with 

 any sign of spawii, and all the pogies we catch at Proviucetown in the 

 fall have spawn in them. My idea is that the large fat pogies strike off 

 the coast of Maine in the fall and do not make the shore again, unless 

 they make the Carolina shore (if they make any shore), and the men- 

 haden that we have passing along the New England coast in the fall 

 are the same ones that went east in the spring. They always have 

 sjniwn in them when they return in the fall, and it is not an uncommon 

 thing to find spawn in them in Maine. 



There is one more subject to which attention should be directed : I 

 fished in Gardner's Bay, New York, five years or seasons from the spring 

 of 1851) to the fiill of 1861. On August 17, 1862, a school of very large 

 fat menhaden came into Gardner's Bay, which made 14 gallons of oil to 

 the thousand of fish without exj^ressing. The next season, the 18th of 

 August, the same kind of fish came again, and since that Mr. G. W. 



