424 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



49. There is no oil extracted from scrap ; the oil is extracted from the 

 fish and the water is extracted at the same time, and what is left is scrap, 

 or, as we call it, fish-guano. 



50. Fish are generally poorest in the spring when they first appear 

 next to the shore; after cold winters they are much poorer than after 

 warm winters, which shows that during warm winters they feed more 

 than they do in cold winters. 1 have seen them so poor in this bay in 

 the summer season that out of one hundred barrels we could not get 

 one pint of oil; then, again, I have seen them so fat that the average 

 would be over two and one-half gallons to the barrel. 



51. The fish are fattest generally in the fall, but I have known them 

 after a warm winter to make 2J gallons to the barrel. But the first 

 18,000 barrels caught by us in Maine during the year 1873 did not make 

 over 14,000 gallons of oil. 



52. During the year 1873 the average to the barrel in Maine was one- 

 half of a gallon more to the barrel than in Long Island Sound, and one 

 gallon and one-half more than the average in Narragausett Bay. 



53. But a few years back there was no such thing known as men- 

 haden oil and guano business; at present there are over $2,000,000 

 invested, and in my opinion the business has but just begun, for ap- 

 parently there are thousands of square miles of the fish, I think, and 

 the business only wants to be known to be embraced. 



54. The manufacturers sell most of their oil in New Bedford, Boston, 

 and New York, and they sometimes export it to Liverpool and Havre. 



55. The phosphate manufacturers buy most of it, and what they do 

 not buy is used by the farmers in the pure state. It is considered to be 

 a first-class fertilizer. 



56. It is used mostly on leather. 



57. Oil fluctuated from G5 cents to 32 cents during the year 1873 ; 

 for the last five years I should think the average price had been 50 cents 

 per gallon. 



58. I do not think that what man does can have any efiect in diminish- 

 ing them, for he has increased his powers of capture for the last few 

 years, and the menhaden have apparently increased in greater propor- 

 tion than ever before. I explain the increase in this way : The men- 

 haden, from the vast destruction by bluefish, come out at the end of 

 the campaign far below their correct proportions, and when the blue- 

 fish ceased to trouble them they began to gain, and are gaining, and 

 will continue to gain until they arrive at nature-s high-water mark, and. 

 then they will stop. Buzzard's Bay, Long Island Sound, Narragausett 

 Bay, and Cape Cod Bay used to be the home of the menhaden, but when 

 the bluefish made those waters his home the menhaden were destroyed 

 or driven away, probably most of them were destroyed, and now that 

 the bluefish are about the same as gone, the menhaden begin to show 

 themselves. This is especially true of Buzzard's and Cape Cod Bays. 

 There have been large quantities of them in New Bedford Harbor for 

 the last two years, and also around the Hen and Chickens. 



