26 American Fisheries Society 



what are the possibilities of conserving this wasted product for 

 the benefit of the people as well as for those engaged in fishing 

 for market. I take it that in order to carry out the implied instruc- 

 tions of the federal authorities, the greatest attention should be 

 given to conserving everything that can save waste. Along the 

 Illinois River alone there is thrown overboard enough valuable 

 product to aggregate in the course of a year a large amount of 

 money, reckoned as hundreds of thousands of dollars. How to 

 save it so as to make the salvage best worth while seems to be the 

 question. 



I have been interesting myself in the problem and, after seing 

 some of the experiments made by Dr. Chas. W. Greene, of the 

 University of Missouri, at work at Meredosia and points on the 

 river in the interest of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, I am 

 convinced of the possibilities of securing practical results and I am 

 indebted to Dr. Greene for many valuable suggestions. 



Dr. Greene was making some experiments on the eggs of carp 

 and other fish for a possible use for caviar. This material, from 

 the carp and buffalo, particularly early in spring, can be had in 

 great quantities, at points along the Illinois river, for the taking. 

 The shovel-bill or spoon-bill, which had a large run this season, 

 would furnish a large supply also, if their eggs were taken early 

 enough, and would seem to offer a valuable factor in this industry. 

 More than a hundred thousand pounds of shovel-bills were caught, 

 dressed and shipped to St. Louis markets as sliced or boneless 

 catfish, selling F. 0. B. at Meredosia at fourteen to seventeen 

 cents a pound. Enough waste was thrown away from these 

 fish to have paid a fair profit, if it could have been saved. 



Dr. Greene took five and one-half pounds of fat from the belly 

 of a spoon-bill, a strip along the belly, as I understood it, as the 

 fat if cooked with the fish is objectionable. From this fat he 

 rendered two and two-fifth pints of fine oil, which from appearance 

 and subsequent anafysis, after being clarified, proved to be equal 

 to some of the fats used for cooking. Dr. Greene also advanced 

 what seemed to me practical ideas as to saving all waste in dressing 

 and also the dead fish now thrown away; the dead fish to be 

 utilized by extracting the oil and converting the residue into 

 fertilizer, while the waste procured in cleaning fish, after removing 



