HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MENHADEN. 279 



n. W. JobnstoD, A Special Eeport on the Distress among the Nova 

 Scotia Fishermen, 1870. 



Case of ller Majest j 's Government, 02?. cit.. Appendix A, p. 28. 



Answer on Behalf of the United States of America to the Case of 

 Her Britannic Majesty's Government, Appendix B, pp. 18, 19. 



Ileply on Behalf of Her Britannic Majesty's Government to the An- 

 swer of the United States of America, Appendix C, pp. 9, 10. 



Richard H. Dana, jr., Appendix J, p. 78; Appendix 1^, p. C7. 



APPENDIX D. 



EXTRACTS PROM WRITINGS OF ICHT^YOLOGISTS RELATING TO THE 



MENHADEN. 



[From Trausactious of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. V, 1802, pi3. 77-81.] 



A DRAWING AND DESCRIPTION OF THE CLUPEA TYRANNUS AND ONIS- 

 CUS PR^GUSTATOR. BY BENJAMIN HENRY LATROBE, F. A. P. S. 



The committee, to whom was referred Mr. Latrobe's paper on a species 

 of Oniscus, called by the author Oniscus prccgiistator, reports that the 

 same is w orthy of publication. 



Benjamim Smith Barton. 



February 17, 1800. 



Philadelphia, December ISth, 1799. 

 To Thomas P. Smith, 



One of the Secretaries of the American Philosophical Society : 



Sir : I beg leave, through your means, to communicate to the Amer- 

 ican Philosophical Society an account of an insect, whose mode of 

 habitation, at least during some part of his life, has appeared to me one 

 of the most singular, not to say whimsical, that can be conceived. 



In the month of March, 1797, illness coiitiued me, for several days, at 

 the house of a friend on York Eiver, in Virginia, during Lis absence. 

 My inability to move farther than the shore of the river gave me leisure 

 to examine carefully, and in more than an hundred instances, the fact 

 I am going to mention. 



Among the fish that, at this early season of the year, resort to the 

 waters of the York River, the alewife, or old-wife, called the bay alewife 

 [Chipea nondescripta), arrives in very considerable shoals, and in some 

 seasons their number is almost incredible. They are fully of the size of a 

 large herring, and are principally distinguished from the herring by a 

 bay or red spot above gill-fin. They are, when caught, from March to 

 ^lay, full roed and fat, and are at least as good a fish for the table as 

 the herring. In this season, each of the alewives carries in her mouth 

 an insect, about two inches long, hanging with its back downwards and 

 firmly holding itself by its 14 legs to the palate. The fishermen call this 

 insect "the louse." It is with difficulty that it can be separated, and 



