THE SEA FISHERIES OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. 141 
The fact that the throwing overboard of offal does not in itself drive 
away fish generally is illustrated in the fishery for the small dog shark 
about Provincetown. Great numbers of these are taken annually for 
the livers, which are removed, and the rest of the fish thrown over- 
board. The result is apparently to increase the number of these fish, 
and make the catch of a larger number practicable. 
The number of skates is greatly increased in any given locality, on 
the banks where they abound, by throwing overboard large quantities 
of gurry. This is especially noticeable to the trawl fishermen, who often 
find after remaining in one berth or position for several days, that the 
ends of the trawls next the vessel have on them an increased number 
of skates. 
In further reference to this subject of gurry on fishing-grounds and 
to the alleged wastage of fish by dropping from trawls and gill-nets, 
itis not a little remarkable that the question of the injury of the use 
of the trawl-line to the fish and fisheries of the locality where prac- 
ticed, should at the present time be for the most part confined to North 
America, while European writers now scarcely refer to any inconven- 
ience likely to result from this cause. The practice of line fishing is 
considered in its two divisions of hand-line and trawl, or long line, but 
this is merely a question of comparative expediency and the cost of the 
investmert. 
In the question at issue between the fishermen of Great Britain in 
1866, the case lay for the most part between the trawls on the one side 
and the hand-line fishermen on the other, the latter making no charge 
of any injury to the fishing in the rejoinder against the long-lines. 
It is perhaps less the practice in Europe than it is in America to clean 
the fish at sea, and to throw the refuse overboard, a wasteful practice, 
which of course is to be discountenanced. In Norway, on the great fish- 
ing-grounds, the sale of the offal to companies organized for utilizing it 
is a matter of very great importance. It is sold ata fair price, the 
dried head of the cod being in part prepared as food for cattle, but for 
the most part converted into guano, which has an established position 
in the European markets, as might be expected, allowing it to consti- 
tute one-third of the total weight of nearly 20,000,000 codfish. 
In England the codfish taken are for the most part sold entire or 
dressed in the fishmongers’ establishments. 
If a considerable percentage of the fish taken on the long-line or 
trawl is necessarily lost by droppixg off from the hooks by their exces- 
sive weight on being hauled up, the injury, if it be one, of their decay 
on the sea-bottom would in all probability have impressed itself upon 
the minds of observers in England ; but the only allusions I have been 
able to find to this subject of dead fish on fishing-grounds is in connec- 
tion with the herring fishery on the coast of Norway, where it was al- 
leged that the dead fish which were lost from the gill-nets polluted the 
_ water and tended to drive the herring away. 
