HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MENHADEN. 507 



ever in the fall of 1877. Sometimes at a siu^le tide each net-fisber- 

 inau would catcli at his "berth" thirty or forty iudividuals. They cou- 

 tiuued to take them uutil January. 



Mr. H. L. Dudley, of Piue Island, states that the season in Eastern 

 Long Island Sound has usually opened May 1 to May 10, and closed 

 about November 15. In 1877 some fish were caught after December 1, 

 and in 1878 his steamer caught 125,000, April 15, the earliest catch ever 

 known. 



3. The spawning-grounds of the menhaden. 



(Paragraph 133, p. 99.) 



Evidence now tends to show that some of the schools, at least, defer 

 spawning until the season of their approach to the coast in April. Like 

 the mackerel, they seem to come into the shoal water along the shores 

 of the Middle States and Southern New England laden with ripe ova, 

 which they may deposit either on the sandy bottoms at a distance from 

 laud or in the entrance to the broad bays. With this new light I am 

 prepared to believe that certain schools spawn in the rivers and sounds 

 of the Southern States from Florida to North Carolina, as is confidently 

 stated by several of our correspondents ; indeed, I have had several 

 strong testimonies from persons in Florida since writing paragraph 133. 

 Although the facts are not sufficient to determine whether menhaden 

 spawn on a falling temperature, like the herring, or on a rising temper- 

 ature, like the shad, the latter view appears to be gaining in weight. 



Capt. Robert H. Hurlbert, of Gloucester, a close observer, whose 

 statements about the mackerel and cod I have often had occasion to 

 test and never found inaccurate, assures me that in 1875, when with 

 the mackerel fleet on the southern coast, he saw a number of menhaden, 

 full of spawn, taken in the seine with a school of mackerel, twelve 

 miles south of the Five-Fathom Bank light-ship, off Delaware Bay. 

 This was late in April. 



In late April, 1877, again, he seined ten barrels of fat, large fish off 

 Chincoteague Shoals, on the eastern shore of Virginia. Their abdo- 

 mens were much extended, and all which were examined j)roved to be 

 full of spawn. Captain Hurlbert has caught them and examined num- 

 bers of them later in the season after fishing began in Block Island 

 Sound, but has never seen spawn in them. 



Capt. Henry E. Webb, of Milk Island, Rockport, Mass., states that 

 twenty years ago he was in the habit of catching menhaden in the 

 neighborhood of Cape Ann. He caught a few large ones every year 

 before the great schools came in. These he cut up for bait, and occa- 

 sionally found them full of spawn. He has never seen spawn in them 

 after the middle of May. When a boy, as early as 1818, he lived at 

 Kiverhead, N. Y., near the eastern entrance of Long Island Sound. He 

 says that he was accustomed to catch multitudes of young menhaden 

 in a musquito net seine toward the end of summer. These little fish 



