THE HERRING AND ITS ALLIES. 



395 



" The Alewife," writes Col. MacDonald. '• is by far the most abunthuit 

 of our river fishes, and throughout the whole Soutiiern region where thev 

 are caught, together with the Shad, the number of indi\iduals is not firr 

 from ten to twenty times as great as that of the Shad. For instance, in 

 the Albemarle region, in 1879, 750,000 Shad were taken and upwards of 

 20,000,000 Alewives. Again, in iSSo, about 600,000 Shad were taken 

 from the Potomac and 11,000,000 Alewives. By far the greatest number 

 of the AleAvives thus taken were "Glut Herring," C. cestivalis ; but, since 

 the two species are sold together, without discrimination, no accurate 

 statement of proportional numbers can be made. 



V.'V 



^^ 



t/ 



THE BRANCH HEERISG OR ALETTIFE. 



There is on Cape Cod an extensive Alewife fishery. This has for more 

 than a century been regulated by law, and the fish are allowed during 

 stated periods to swim without interruption to their spawning beds. The 

 streams in which they are taken are so small, and the fish in their ascent 

 so crowded together, that they appear to be extremely abundant, although 

 the aggregate catch for the entire Cape is not perhaps much greater than 

 the yield of many single seines in the South. Here, however, there has 

 been no great decrease in abundance, while in the South the herring fishery 

 is much less productive than in former years. 



A very remarkable phenomenon, recently observed, has been the appear- 

 ance of this species in immense numbers in Lake Ontario and lakes of New 

 York. This has been only in waters in which shad fry had previously 

 been placed by fish culturists. 



Like the Shad, the Alewives are anadromous in habit. The dates of 

 their first appearance in any given river may be very closely determined 



