68 REPOET OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



34 feet high) to practice the j)rocess, which will he in operation before 

 the close of 1877, with the special object of making artificial fish-flour 

 and dried powders for fertilizing purposes. In this process they expect 

 to work up a great number of refuse fish, which they promise to pur- 

 chase at the same price as menhaden and in the following order of prefer- 

 ence : Bluefish, porpoises, sharks, dogfish, menhaden, and skates. They 

 propose to work up twenty tons of fish each day, and to employ from one 

 to three steamers to cruise for these supplies, extending from Block Isl- 

 and to the coast of Maine, touching all intermediate points. 



The extent of destruction to fish caused by the porpoises, skates, and 

 dogfish is well known, and should the anticipated manipulation of forty 

 thousand pounds of refuse fish per day be accomplished, or say twelve 

 millions per year (counting three hundred days to the year, and allow- 

 ing ten millions of pounds for the destructive kinds), we shall have an 

 enormous withdrawal of predatory fish from the scene of action. This 

 aggregate might be considered as equivalent in destroying capacity to 

 two millions of bluefish at five pounds each; and an estimate of the 

 amount of fish that would be devoured by such a body has been given 

 in my first report. If the success anticipated for this venture be real- 

 ized, it is probable that other establishments of a similar kind will be 

 started, constituting a still greater relaxation of the exhaustion of the 

 yield offish. A few years of such fishing should present a marked in- 

 fluence upon the supply of edible fishes along the middle and northern 

 coast of the United States. 



3. NATURAL CAUSES OR CHANCES. 



Fish as a class are quite subject to fatalities arising from natural 

 causes, and which sometimes operate on a very large scale. Among 

 these, volcanic eruptions are not the least momentous. It very fre- 

 quently happens that such phenomena from volcanoes near to or in the 

 sea are accompanied by discharges of boiliug water or of poisonous 

 gases, which contaminate the waters and cause great distraction to 

 animal life therein. Many cases of this character are on record as in- 

 cidents in the history of volcanic discharges. Not unfrequently mud 

 is thrown out in vast masses, which fills lakes and streams, or invades 

 the edges of the ocean with disastrous consequences to life. Violent 

 storms and hurricanes are also to be considered in this connection, fish 

 being not unfrequently blown on the shores or taken up bodily and car- 

 ried to a great distance inland. Sudden changes by winds and currents 

 of the sea bottom not unfrequently cut off portions of the sea occupied 

 by large bodies of fish, which, unable to get back to proper physical 

 surroundings, soon perish. Very often, too, this action of the winds 

 and waves renders the waters very turbid and unfit for animal life in 

 the sea, which is consequently speedily destroyed. Of this, striking 

 illustrations will be given in a succeeding chapter. 



