8 2 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And now let us examine more particularly tlie bearing which 

 this elucidation of the habits of the mackerel in the eastern At- 

 lantic has upon the waning mackerel fisheries of the eastern 

 American seaboard. Unfortunately, we have not the same spe- 

 cific data which are furnished in the Annals of Kinsale to compare 

 the earlier conditions. In fact, we have no authentic records of 

 mackerel fishing with nets earlier than the first decade of this 

 century ; and, as says Mr. R. Edward Earll, in his exhaustive re- 

 port, it was not until 1826 that the New England mackerel fish- 

 eries were prosecuted with any appreciable success. Prof. Brown 

 Goode and Captain Collins, of Gloucester, have also added most 

 important contributions to the history of the mackerel off this 

 coast; and, as all these efforts are contained in the official re- 

 ports of the United States Commissioners of Fish and Fisheries, 

 I shall confine my own observations within the limits of the offi- 

 cial records of their research. The mackerel fishery off the New 

 England coast extends from the northern end of the Gulf of 

 Maine to Cape Cod, and it has been ascertained that their spawn- 

 ing ground lies between the Shoals of Nantucket and the Bay of 

 Fundy. A general fishing, however, is carried on from the shoals 

 southward as far as the Chesapeake Bay. Mackerel were first 

 fished for in these waters off the New England coast ; and when, 

 in 1870, the older appliances were discarded by the majority of 

 the fishermen and the purse-seine adopted, enormous numbers 

 were captured by the men who fished outside Gloucester. Dis- 

 covering, however, that the fish could be captured earlier in the 

 season farther south, the more enterprising among the fishermen 

 tried the waters as far south as the Chesapeake and Delaware 

 Bays, and succeeded admirably for several seasons. Then, in 

 1878, the men who remained on the New England ground, and 

 who continued to use the old appliances — drag and gill nets — dis- 

 covered that the supply of mackerel was becoming irregular and 

 smaller, and, believing that this scarcity and irregularity of the 

 fish were caused by the use of the purse-seine, they protested 

 against the use of that style of net in precisely the same manner 

 as did the Irish fishermen petition against the " long nets of the 

 French " in 1675. 



The protest of the Gloucester men had no effect ; the Southern 

 fishery was continued uninterruptedly for several seasons more, 

 and finally the mackerel seemed to have disappeared from the 

 coast in the same manner as they did from the Irish coast from 

 1883 to 1892 during the spring season ; and in the same manner 

 also they reappear off their New England spawning grounds in 

 the late summer. I omitted to state that the season mackerel is 

 caught in American waters in the same months that they are in 

 seaon off the Irish coast, viz., March to June. 



