THE SHAD— A NATIONAL PROBLEM 



By Charles Minor Blackford, M.D., Staunton, Va. 



Among the many blessings bestowed by nature on 

 North America, the almost infinite wealth of its sea and 

 inland fisheries takes high rank. The famous fisheries 

 of the North Sea become almost trivial when compared 

 with those of our Atlantic coast ; the much vaunted sal- 

 mon streams of Norway and Scotland become merely 

 sportsmen's playgrounds when compared with the Co- 

 lumbia and others of our Pacific streams, and probably 

 no equal area of water in the world is as prolific in fish- 

 ery products as is Lake Erie. From the bayous of the 

 Gulf to the tributaries of Hudson Bay, the two species 

 of black bass abound, while the charrs of the east and 

 the trouts of the west afford game to anglers from ocean 

 to ocean. The gourmand familiar with the flavor of our 

 American fishes, finds the whitebait of the Thames or 

 the other far-famed delicacies of Europe insipid, for 

 there are no fishes of the old world that can bear com- 

 parison with the red snapper and the pompano of our 

 southern shores ; the blue fish, the weak fish, the Spanish 

 mackerel and the "spot" of the Middle States, or the 

 hake, the haddock and the cod of more nothern waters, 

 to mention only a few of the better known products of 

 the harvests of our seas. Without disparaging these 

 or the equally luscious fishes of the Great Lakes and the 

 Pacific, it may be safely said that the veritable king of 

 food fishes is a denizen of our waters, for there is prob- 

 ably no fish on earth that surpasses the shad in all the 

 qualities that go to make up an ideal food fish. 



The true shad is a member of the great herring family, 

 and it may be claimed as essentially an American fish. 

 It has a near relative in European waters called the 

 "Maifisch", but this latter is so inferior to its American 

 cousin that it cannot be considered as in the same class 

 except zoologically. In America, there are several fishes 



