89 



purpose, until their work and short lives were done. 

 Young alewives, transparent little fellows about an inch in 

 length, and not long hatched, were noticed swimming in 

 small schools along the edge of the lake. These were 

 the young from the eggs laid by the very fish that were 

 now so anxious to return to the sea. and these young- 

 would follow in three or four months, when they would 

 be about four inches in length, and they would return to 

 the place of their birth, as full grown fish, in their third 

 year. 



The alewives are very prolific, each female laying about 

 one quarter million of egg^, and though, possibly, not 

 over one tenth of these eggs results in the production of 

 full grown fishes, yet this tenth would give an immense 

 number of young fish developed in such a body of water 

 as Wenham Lake — say twenty-five million young for 

 every thousand adult females that enter the lake. ' There 

 was a time when the alewives must have swarmed into the 

 lake by the hundreds of thousands, but their free run to 

 and from the sea has been cut off by the erection of 

 dams, the using of water and the excessive fisheries, to 

 such an extent that now but comparatively few enter the 

 lake, though, thanks to the noble work of our State Com- 

 missioners of Fisheries, in connection with the commis- 

 sioners of the other New England States, the alewife with 

 its cousin the shad, and the brilliant trout and silvery 

 salmon, are fast becoming plenty in our rivers and lakes, 

 and if the work of the commissioners continues to receive 

 the well earned support of the people, and every one 

 helps to enforce the laws providing for the free passage ot 

 fish over all our dams and preventing excessive fishing at 

 the time of spawning, we shall have no cause of com- 

 plaint about the want of good fishes and good fishing. 

 For it is now 7 w r ell demonstrated that fishes can be made 

 Essex Ixst. Bulletin. iii 12 



