SEA MUSSELS AND DOGFISH AS FOOD. 253 
The dogfish question is one which has very seriously occupied the Canadian 
government. The dogfish have been for eight years or more a perfect pest on the 
Atlantic coast especially. They have been very numerous on the Pacific coast, and 
on the Pacific coast they were turned to account in the manufacture of oil, in the 
vicinity of Queen Charlotte Islands, but the carcasses were thrown away. In Canada 
the proposition was made that they should be utilized in some way or other. My 
own original proposition to the government was that we should adopt some method 
of extermination, without any idea of utilization, as Australia dealt with the rabbit 
pest on land. I favored methods of extermination, to get rid of the pest as soon as 
possible. 
Another scheme, for which I am to a large extent responsible, was dogfish reduction 
factories for grinding up these fish into fertilizer materials. But the oil in the tissues 
was a very great trouble; there seemed to be too much oil to get rid of; but a very 
good fertilizer material was produced by three large government fertilizer works. Doc- 
tor Field, of Boston, will be able to tell us something about that. He has just visited 
these works. They are using a large number of these dogfish for purposes of fertilizer, 
and the government has spent a large sum annually on reduction works; but these 
factories have not done anything in regard to utilizing them as food. The three works 
at Shippegan, Chaleurs Bay, Canso, Nova Scotia, and Clarke’s Harbor, western Nova 
Scotia, have all utilized the dogfish for fertilizer, and the supply of that fish was often 
far larger than the works could possibly handle. These enterprises encourage the 
destruction of the dogfish; and I believe the last reports regarding the dogfish indicate 
they are not so plentiful. If Mr. E. C. Whitman, of Canso, is present he might tell us 
something about the dogfish on the Nova Scotia coast at the present moment. 
With respect to their use as food, I recommended to the Dominion Government 
that a bounty be given, in order to bring ‘‘ocean whitefish,’’ as canned dogfish has been 
called, upon the market, but as they had to be placed upon the English markets at a 
very low price, in order to compete with salmon and other cheap canned fish, our Govern- 
ment did not see its way clear to bonus this enterprise. I requested this because I am 
satisfied that if the canned dogfish, properly put up, once gained any hold in the markets— 
the great markets of populous countries—the demand would be assured for the future. 
It isa most excellent food, and while Mr. Libby said—at least one of the gentlemen present 
told us—that the appearance of the fish deteriorated by keeping, so far as I know the 
dogfish which were canned in Cape Breton and Canada as an experiment had a very 
good appearance a long time after they had been put up. I have some of them in my 
office at present, and upon opening them at least a year after packing the color had not 
much deteriorated. 
There are really a great many things to say about this question. Now, the wharves 
and floors of the reduction works at Canso at times were just covered with dogfish eggs 
nearly as large as hen’s eggs, and they certainly could be turned to account. In Nor- 
way they have been used for a century or more for domestic consumption; women 
collect them and make puddings of them. I do not think they are good boiled or 
poached, but they are suitable for puddings. 
There is another point that I have often referred to, in regard to this dogfish ques- 
tion—so serious a question for our fisheries. It is this: That the fishermen should be 
discouraged on all hands from simply opening the female fish full of living young and 
liberating them in the sea, as they have constantly done. I have been on boats when 
the men just did this in order to see the young dogfish swim away, which is a kind of arti- 
ficial fish culture that we ought to deprecate in the strongest terms. 
The PRESIDENT. Do you desire to have the discussion still continued? I wonder 
if any serious effort has been made to use the skin of the dogfish for leather? 
Dr. GEORGE W. FIELD. The fish commission of Massachusetts had this dogfish 
matter placed before them for the first time about three or four years ago. They have 
