HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MENHADEN. 409 



29. I never noticed it to be so. 



30. I cannot say positively whether the parent fish devour their young 

 or not, but think not ; there are, however, many of their eggs destroyed 

 by fish that live on or near the bottom of the sea, such as flounders, soul- 

 pins, perch. Sharks and bluefish destroy many of the young fish. 



31. Have never seen anything of the kind. 



32. Probably the sharks and porpoises destroy many of them, but 

 bluefish are their worst enemy ; they destroy an immense number of them 

 every year, 



33. Never knew or heard of any disease among them. I have seen 

 them in the mouth of the Merrimac Kiver in immense quantities, school- 

 ing ; they are probably destroyed in immense numbers along the coast 

 every year by the fresh water coming down the river. 



34. Set-nets and seines. 



35. The nets are from fifty to eighty yards in length, and from fifty 

 to a hundred meshes in depth ; the meshes are from four to four and a 

 half inches in length. 



24. Statement of David F. Loring, Cai)e Cod Light- Station, Korth Truro, 

 Mass., February 23, 1875. 



1. Pogy. 



4. Do not know the number of barrels taken during the year 1873, 

 probably not over a thousand in this vicinity ; but during the fiill of the 

 year 1874 there was some thirty thousand barrels taken by small steam- 

 ers with seines. These steamers belong to a company in Fall River, 

 Mass. This company has a large establishment or oil-factory at Booth 

 Bay, Me., where they carry on the business very extensively during the 

 summer season. After the pogies leave the coast of Maine and start 

 south the steam seiners follow them. After leaving their establishment 

 in Maine in November, 1874, and while crossing Massachusetts Bay, 

 the steamers took a fresh breeze and came into Provincetown Harbor ; 

 and in going out of the harbor to go around Cape Cod, after the storm, 

 they fell in with pogies in the bay, and took 30,000 barrels in four or 

 five weeks. I believe the fishermen in this vicinity have an idea of going 

 into the business quite extensively the coming season ; it will probably 

 be the beginning of a large business. 



10. It is doubtless a fact that these fish are driven away from the 

 shore by the use of seines, especially in localities where the seining 

 business is carried on extensively 5 as, for instance, the coast of Maine, 

 where, a few years ago, the seiners could get all they wanted close in 

 along the shore ; now they have to go from thirty to fifty miles off-shore 

 to get the fish. I am informed by old fishermen, who have been en- 

 gaged in different kinds of fishing on the coast of Maine for the last 

 fifteen or twenty years, that while these fish do not go in along the shore 

 as they itsed to, they are very plentiful oflt-shore, but not as plentiful as 

 they were ten years ago ; and they agree with me that it is the seiners 



