198 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



President Dwigbt, of Yale College, visiting Eastern Long Island in 

 1804, speaks with much approval of the menhaden as a fertilizer, and 

 thus describes the introduction of its use : 



"Their agriculture has, within a few years, been greatly improved. 

 For a considerable period before the date of this journey the land had 

 become generally impoverished by a careless husbandry, in which the 

 soil was only exhausted, and no attempts were made to renew its 

 strength. * * * Within this period the inhabitants, with a laudable 

 spirit of enterprise, have set themselves to collect manure wherever it 

 could be found. Not content with what they could make and find on 

 their own farms and shores, they have sent their vessels up the Hudson 

 and loaded them with the residuum of potash manufactories, gleaned 

 the streets of New York, and have imported various kinds of manure 

 from New Haven, New London, and even from Hartford. In addition 

 to all this, they have swept the Sound, and covered their fields with the 

 immense shoals of white-fish with which, in the beginning of summer, 

 its waters are replenished. No manure is so cheap as this, where the 

 fish abound 5 none is so rich, and few are so lasting. Its effects on veg- 

 etation are prodigious. Lands which heretofore have scarcely yielded 

 ten bushels of wheat by the acre, are said, when dressed with white-fish, 

 to have yielded forty. The number caught is almost incredible. It is 

 here said, and that by persons of very fair reputation, that 150,000 have 

 been taken at a single draught. Such, upon the whole, have been their 

 numbers, and such the ease with which they have been obtained, that 

 lands in the neighborhood of productive fisheries are declared to have 

 risen, within a few years, to three, four, and, in some cases, to six times 

 their former value." * 



Elsewhere he speaks with equal favor of its use in Connecticut, re- 

 marking that it is remarkably favorable to vegetation of every kind, 

 which is the object either of agriculture or horticulture : 



'' Within the last twenty years the inhabitants of this [Branford] and 

 other townships along the coast have employed for the purposes of 

 manure the white-fish, a species of herring remarkably fat and so fall 

 of bones that it cannot conveniently be eaten. In the mouths of June 

 and July these fish frequent the Sound in shoals, and are caught with 

 seines in immense multitudes. Ten thousand are considered as a rich 

 dressing for an acre. No manure fertilizes ground in an equal degree; 

 and none seems more universally favorable to the productions of the 

 climate. Wheat, particularly, grows under its influence in the most 

 prolific manner, and is peculiarly safe from blasting. 



* * # * * * * 



" The following is a strong instance of the fertility of land manured 

 with white-fish : Mr. David Dibble, of Killingworth, from 5J acres of 

 land dressed with this manure, had in the year 1812, 244| bushels of rye, 



* Dwight's Travels, III, 1822, p. 305. Journey to Long Island, 1804, Letter II. 



