American Fisheries Society 265 



is the fish that is commonly known as the piked dogfish of England. 

 Both of these I have tasted boiled, roasted, and broiled; and I have 

 found them quite palatable, notwithstanding that the great majority 

 of people cannot be taught to so consider them without urgent argu- 

 ment. I am afraid dogfish will not become vendible here for a long 

 time. Nevertheless they are considered very palatable in other coun- 

 tries. The Chinese and Japanese consume large quantities of different 

 kinds of shark; and they are even exported from California to China 

 and Japan— especially to China. There are also fisheries on the Indian 

 Coast where a shark is obtained nearly 60 feet long, it is said, and that 

 fishery at least pays enough for the Indians, but the traffic has not 

 extended to the Europeans. 



Dr. G. W. Field, Boston, Mass. : The commissioners in Massachu- 

 setts have had some experience with dogfish in commercial ways 

 other than food. The most recent experiments are upon the line of 

 the utilization of the eggs. As perhaps you know, the eggs are about 

 the size of a hen's egg, and we found they could be used to replace 

 hen's eggs for currying leather. But dogfish eggs cannot be procured 

 in commercial quantities at present on account of the prejudices of 

 fishermen, who object to handling the fish; they simply get rid of 

 them as quickly as possible. If those fish could be utiHzed in large 

 quantities, where the liver could be used for oil and the eggs for cur- 

 rying leather, the skin possibly tanned for glove leather and for sword 

 belts and things of that kind, and the body itself used either for food 

 or fertilizer, there is no question but that dogfish could be utilized to 

 a very great advantage directly as food. 



Indirectly also it could be utilized for the benefit of other fisheries by 

 removing from the sea an animal which lives entirely or almost en- 

 tirely upon edible fish, and which is practically levying a toll upon the 

 fisheries of the United States and of the world to an extent which is 

 inconceivable. We have found by inquiry among the fishermen of 

 Massachusetts alone that their catch of dogfish is practically equal to 

 all other varieties of edible fish. We found that their estimate was 

 that they caught 27,000,000 dogfish in a season, and I am assuming that 

 the dogfish weighs from three to five pounds. That practically foots 

 up to the cod catch. It is really an enormous problem. 



Dr. Gill: What is a dogfish? A dogfish simply means, in popular 

 parlance, a small shark that lives in large droves or schools; but in 

 the case of the southern dogfish, it is one that has the form of most 

 of the temperate and tropical sharks, without the spines to the fins. 

 It has a well distinguished anal fin. The species of the north is 

 entirely different; that is, it has a spine in front of each dorsal fin, and 

 it has no anal fin. The teeth are extremely different in the two. But 

 these are only superficial differences. When you come to examine the 

 skeleton you will find that the differences are vast. Morphologically 

 speaking, the term "dogfish" has no meaning. It is simply then, as I 

 repeat, the designation of a small shark living in large communities. 



Mr. Charles R. Knight: I have just come back from Woods Hole 

 where I have been observing dogfish and sharks, and there the hound- 



