EFFECTS OF THE MENHADEN AND MACKEREL FISHERIES. 287 
The movements of both mackerel and menhaden when feeding, as men- 
tioned before, are not rapid from place to place for any great distance, but up 
and down, here and there, and around and around in that movement termed 
‘“*cart-wheeling.” While the latter movement is considered by many ‘‘just 
play,’”’ the manner of occurrence of minute organisms in aggregations of greater 
or less extent suggests that the fish are circling about in a school of these organ- 
isms, ‘‘scooping them in.”’ 
SPAWNING MIGRATIONS OF THE MACKEREL, 
Regarding the migrations of fishes to their spawning places, every known 
fact in relation to menhaden points to no extensive migration for the majority 
of the fish. Mackerel apparently travel greater distances, but there is no 
evidence in support of the former belief that they traverse the whole length of 
the coast from Hatteras to Labrador and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is hardly 
possible that one man would have sufficient endurance to observe day and night 
a body of fish for so long a period, and a change of watch would vitiate the 
evidence. While it is perhaps possible that a body of mackerel would remain 
at the surface continuously day and night, it is more than merely probable that 
it would occasionally sink below the surface. If it did, the observer could not 
be sure that the fish appearing subsequently were the same school. 
Some years ago mackerel sighted by the seining fleet off Liverpool, Nova 
Scotia, were “followed” along the coast and around the eastern extremity of 
Cape Breton. The fish were up and down, sometimes a day or a night elapsing 
with no fish seen. It was noticed that while the schools of mackerel along the 
western portion of the Nova Scotia coast had alewives and shad mixed with 
them, those caught after rounding the eastern end of Cape Breton had none 
of these adventitious fishes, but many schools were mixed with large herring, 
called by the fishermen “ Newfoundland bloaters.”’ Here, too, the mackerel 
were somewhat larger than those on the south shore. 
Of course in the nature of things there is nothing to prevent the mackerel 
constituting the “body” from varying in size in different schools, each school 
perhaps having different fish mixed with it. But it is hardly probable that 
had the alewives gone around Cape Breton, or the herring been at the south or 
west of that point, some would not have been caught there. This gives rise 
to the suspicion that extensive migration is more apparent than real. 
The condition of the reproductive organs of these fish, too, indicated that 
' they were near the spawning time. According to the observer, each batch 
examined was thought to be within a week or so of it, which suggests that the 
fish may have been spawning along the coast. That those caught were not 
ripe offers no contra-argument. For it is possible that as the fish ripened they 
sank to some depth below the surface, where they spawned, and occasional few 
spent fish indicated that all did not reappear immediately afterwards. It is 
