HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MENHADEN. 419 



Virginia fishing, and at the same time I was at Seconnet fishing, and 

 there was not three days' difference between their arrival in the Chesa- 

 peake and the Xarragansett Bays. The strongest proof of the correct- 

 ness of the above theory is that there is a body of menhaden from one 

 end of the coast to the other during the whole season f 



7. It depends ui)on the weather. Fish make a ripple in the water. 

 When it is warm they generally are near the surface and when it is cool 

 they swim deep. 



8. It is my opinion that the fish go square out to sea from one end of 

 the coast to the other, although their general course when first seen is 

 toward the east. But if they all went east, how is it that so many are 

 from one end of the coast to the other during the whole season. 



9. I have never known a season that they have failed to make their 

 appearance. Their time of arrival varies as the season is warm or cold. 

 I have been at Seconnet for seventeen years in succession, and every 

 season they have come sooner or later, but in different quantities, for 

 some seasons they are much more plentiful than they are others. 



10. The nets and seines do not scare them from the shore, for Nar- 

 ragansett Bay has been the theater of their greatest capture for forty 

 years or more, and they have been more plentiful than ever before for 

 the last few years. I have seen a school of fish set out ten times in suc- 

 cession in deep water and they would dive under the seine each time, 

 but when they came to the surface they would not be ten feet from the 

 seine, and they would lie still until we got readj^ to set ; when the seine 

 was around them they would dive again. 



Fish will drive menhaden but man never does, escei)t by use of pow- 

 der ; they are sensitive to ajar, sucii as hitting the deck of a vessel with 

 an ax ; even so slight a jar as the dropping of an oar or the careless 

 slat of a rung on the gunwale has sent a school of fish off at full speed. 



11. They drift with the tide sometimes, and then again they swim 

 against it. I have seen them in Dutch Island Passage, which is the 

 western entrance to ^STarragansett Bay, drift in and out with the tides 

 as regular as it ebbed and flowed. At the first of the flood they would 

 come in and work up as far as Rocky Point, and when it made ebb 

 they would drift down near Narragansett Pier. 



12. I know of no favorite places. We hear of them on George's 

 Banks, on Nantucket Shoals, off the coasts of North Carolina and 

 Virginia. I have seen immense schools of them off" the coast of South 

 Carolina, and we all know they are in all the rivers, bays, and creeks 

 from South Carolina to the Bay of Fundy during the summer months. 



13. I think they care nothing about depth of water, for they are found 

 in Inrge quantities in deep and shoal waters. We catch large quan- 

 tities on the coast of Maine in oO fathoms, and even in ICO fathoms; 

 and at the same time there are large amounts of them in the rivers and 

 bays in shoal water. 



14. The temperature of the water does seem to affect them ; they do 



