162 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



discover its value. About the year 1850 Mrs. Joliu Bartlett, of Blue 

 Hill, uear Mouut Desert, Me., while boiliug some fish for her chickens 

 noticed a thin scum of oil upon the surface of the water. Some of this 

 she bottled, and when on a visit to Boston soon after carried samples to 

 Mr. E. B. Phillips, one of the leading oil merchants of that city, who en- 

 couraged her to bring more. The following year the Bartlett family 

 industriously plied their gill-nets and sent to market thirteen barrels of 

 oil, for which they were paid at the rate of $11 per barrel, in all $143.* 

 Mr. Phillips gave them further encouragement, furnishing nets and 

 large kettles, which they set up out of doors in brick frames, for trying 

 out the fish. It was thought that much oil was thrown away with the 

 refuse fish or scrap, and the idea of pressing this scrap was suggested. 

 This was at first accomplished by pressing it in a common iron kettle 

 with a heavy cover and a long beam for a lever: afterward by placing 

 it under the weight of heavy rocks, in barrels and tubs perforated with 

 auger holes. Mr. Phillips subsequently fitted out some fifty parties on 

 the coast of Maine with presses of the model known as the "screw and 

 lever press." 



The claims of Connecticut and Neio York. 



22G. Others claim to have manufactured oil about the same time.f 

 -It is said that as early as 1850 or 1852 there was an establishment for 

 the manufacture of white-fish oil near old Fort Hale, New Haven Har- 

 bor. I am informed that Elisha Morgan, of Poquanuock Bridge, Conn., 

 made oil from bony fish previous to the year 1850. He owned seines 

 with which he caught fish to be spread upon laud fresh. When he 

 could not sell all his fish to the farmers he extracted their oil by boiling 

 them. 



Whether the value of the article and the methods of manufacture 

 were first brought to notice in Maine or not, the people of that State 

 were slow to improve their opportunities and the trade first assumed 

 its importance on the shores of Long Island Sound. Whether the fish- 

 erman's wife of Blue Hill is the sole discoverer of the properties of men- 

 haden oil is not evident; perhaps the facts were also known to others. 

 At any rate the tradition of the Bartlett family is not current on Long 

 Island. In the year 1850, according to Captain Sisson, D. D. Wells and 



* As this account is somewliat different from those hitherto pnblished, I give the 

 story in the words of Mr. E. B. Phillips himself: "In about 1850 I was in the fish-oiJ 

 business in Boston. An elderly lady by the name of Bartlett, from Blue Hill, Me., 

 • came into my store with a sample of oil, which she had skimmed from the kettle in 

 boiling menhaden for her hens. She told me that the fish were abundant all summer 

 near the shore, and I promised $11 per barrel for all she could produce. Her husband and 

 sons made thirteen barrels the first year, and the following year one hundred barrels." 



tThe manufacture of oil and of artificial guano from fishes has long been iiracticed 

 in France, where the fish called Merlan {Gadiis mcrlangus) is employed for the purpose, 

 yielding 1| to 2 per cent, of oil. In France the fish cake remaining after the extrac- 

 tion of oil is dried at a steam heat and is then ground fine and packed in air-tight 

 casks for sale as manure. 



