124 



ratus ever devised; by its use a school of almost any 

 size can be secured without the loss of a single fish." 

 The enormous demand of the oil factories can be met 

 only by fisheries conducted upon the grandest scale, 

 and the purse seine is used by the factory fleet to the 

 exclusion of all other nets. 



The purse net, as Prof G. Brown Goode and Mr. 

 Hildreth sa}^, takes all fish within its enclosure or 

 bounds, which must necessarily include the taking of 

 a very large quantity of food fish in its use in taking 

 the average yearly catch of 500,000,000 of menhaden. 



Agreeable to statement compiled by Hugh M. 

 Smith, and published in the United States Fish Com- 

 mission bulletin, the number of hauls made by two men- 

 haden steamers for one season is given as 1078, and 

 the proportion of the catch as one twentieth of the 

 menhaden taken for that time ; this would give a total 

 of 21,560 hauls made in a season from the best avail- 

 able data on the subject. The average length of the 

 purse nets used by the menhaden fishermen is about 

 1360 feet ; taking the average length of the nets used 

 as 1350 feet, each haul would enclose 3 32-100 acres, 

 which makes an aggregate of 61,589 acres of water 

 along our coasts, bays, and estuaries upon the feeding 

 and spawning grounds of many of our valuable food 

 fishes thoroughly screened of the food fish yearl}^ 

 The food fish so taken, hastily dumped by steam 

 power by scoops holding five barrels each, in a mass in 

 the hold of the vessel (precludiug the possibility of 

 detecting the various species of fish taken with the 

 menhaden, "even if desired"), where the}' soon sour 

 and become unfit for food, are taken to the factories and 

 rendered into oil and guano. As before stated, it is 

 claimed by many interested in the menhaden fishery 

 that they take but few, if au}', food fish with the purse 

 net, while taking yearly about 500,000,000 menhaden. 

 Those who are familiar with the purse net, and not 



