Ix REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



prevented, at the end of their period of immaturity, to the pUice where 

 they were spawned. 



In addition to the value of the alewife as an article of food, it is of 

 much service in ponds and rivers as nutriment for trout, salmon, and 

 other valuable fishes. The young derive their sustenance from minute 

 crustaceans and other objects too diminutive for the larger fish, and 

 in their great abundance are greedily devoured by the other species 

 around them. In waters inhabited by both pickerel and trout, these 

 fish find in the young alewives sufficient food to prevent their preying 

 upon each other. The}' are also, for the same reason, serviceable in 

 l^onds containing black-bass. 



As a cheap and very abundant food for other fishes, the young alewives 

 can be phiced in waters that have no connection with the sea by merely 

 transferring from any convenient locality a sufficient number of the 

 living mature parents, taken at the approach of the spawuiug-season ; 

 they will remain for several months, and, indeed, can often be easily 

 penned up bj' a suitable dam and kept throughout the year. 



It is in another still more important connection that we should con- 

 sider tlie alewife. It is well known that within the last thirty or forty 

 years the fisheries of cod, haddock, and hake, along our coast, have 

 measural)ly diminished, and in so;uo places ceased entirely. Eiioagh 

 may be taken for local consumption, but localities which formerly 

 furnished the material for an extensive commerce in dried fish have 

 been entirely abandoned. Various causes have been assigned for this 

 condition of things, and, among others, the alleged diminution of the 

 sea-herring. After a careful consideration of the subject, however, I 

 am strongly inclined to believe that it is due to the diminution, and in 

 many instances to the extermination, of the alewives. As already re- 

 marked, before the construction of dams in the tidal rivers, the alewife 

 was found in incredible numbers along our coast, probably remaining 

 not far from shore, excepting when moving up into tbe fresh water, and, 

 at any rate, spending a considerable interval off the mouths of the 

 rivers either at the time of tlieir journey upward or on their return. 

 The young too, after returning from the ocean, usually swarmed in the 

 same localities, and thus furnished for the larger species a bait, such as 

 is not supplied at present by any other fish, the sea-herring not ex- 

 cepted. We know that the- alewife is particularly attractive as a bait 

 to other fishes, especially for cod and mackerel. Alewives enter the 

 streams on the south coast of New England before the arrival of the 

 blue-fish ; but the latter devote themselves with great assiduity to the 

 capture of the young as they come out from their breeding-ponds. The 

 outlet of an alewife-pond is always a capital place for the blue-fish, and 

 as they come very near the shore in such localities, they can be caught 

 there with the line by what is called " heaving and hauling," or throw- 

 ing a squid from the shore, and hauling it in with the utmost rapidity^ 



The coincidence, at least, in the erection of the dams, and the enor- 



