THE SILVERSIDES OF THE GENUS MENIDIA. 945 
or in corn meal, and dry-fried. In Newfoundland large quantities of 
capelin are dried and shipped to London, where they are used as food, 
largely in the oyster houses. There is a possibility in this method of 
curing large silversides for the market. As a side venture some 
method of canning them, in an already established fish-cannery, might 
pay. All of these things, however, will be the natural outgrowth of a 
fishery for silversides when the demand for the fish increases. 
The fact that silversides are the favorite food of many fishes sug- 
gests their use for bait. To this, there are at least two objections: 
They quickly soften, and they die rather too soon for live bait; but they 
are used in both ways for bait for young blue-fish and other fishes. 
PROTECTION. 
There is no doubt that as the excellent food qualities of the silver- 
sides become better known, a demand for them will be created that 
will give rise to extensive fisheries for them, especially as the smelt, 
to which the silversides is but a little inferior, is growing scarcer. 
The silversides, being strictly shore fishes, will more quickly feel’ the 
effect of extensive drafts upon their numbers than do the pelagic 
gregarious fishes, like the mackerel and blue-fish. 
I have stated that one object of this paper is to call attention to an 
opportunity for a paying fishery, but it should be a fishery well regu- 
lated from the beginning. That such regulations may be intelligent, 
resulting in the most good to the greatest number, the economic rela- 
tions of silversides to other fishes should be thoroughly studied, and 
a possible danger thus averted. 
The importance of the subject will warrant emphasizing the fact 
that fishery regulations should be made before the need for them is 
established by sad experience. For ‘‘all the king’s oxen and all the 
king’s men” can never restore exhausted sea fisheries. 
Feasible legislation is, however, a difficult matter, and fishery laws 
are too often of little other use than padding for the statute books. 
Legislation should be founded upon a thorough knowledge of the 
habits of the fish and their relation to other species. As with other 
fishes, it seems desirable that silversides should be unmolested during 
the period of the height of their spawning season, and inasmuch as 
they are found in schools of fairly uniform-sized fish, it would be an 
easy matter for the fisherman to avoid catching small fish, which would 
allow a size limit to be imposed. 
BREEDING HABITS. 
There are no external marks to distinguish sex, even in the breed- 
ing season. The females average larger than the males, and in a 
school, contrary to the usual rule among many fishes, seem to be more 
numerous. Out of 380 specimens of I. menidia from Woods Hole 
