38 AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



Mediterranean, in France, and generally throughout Europe 

 wherever the whiting is found, it occurs in very great numbers, 

 and is one of the highly prized species. Therefore, I believe 

 tliat, if porpoise flesh can be made to taste like smoked beef, 

 push and perseverance on the part of this company will crown 

 their labors in success. Oleomargerine is unblushingly sold 

 for butter ever^'where, and one gentleman, a member of the 

 U. S. Geological Survey, said he preferred it to butter because 

 it would keep better. 



[As Mr. True a few weeks later changed his opinion concern- 

 ing the vakie of the riesh of the porpoise as food, I take the lib- 

 erty of inserting the following from Forest and Stream, June, 

 1885. — Recording Secretary.] 



PORPOISE STEAK. 



Editor Forest and Stream : 



We live in an utilarian age. An age in which a man anoints his 

 rheumatic joints with the waste products of petroleum, fills his con- 

 fectionery with the parings of hoofs and horns, and writes his billets 

 doux on the pressed pulp of the rags that blow in the streets. Yet 

 the historian of these times will write us down as an unenterprising 

 and wasteful generation. With what abuse we should have loaded 

 the Indian had he trusted for his subsistence to the animals he 

 could tame and rear, and let the unnumbered herds of buffaloes that 

 darkened the plains in the old days go bj' his lodge unmolested. We 

 should have looked upon his destruction by our pious ancestors as 

 not the least pious of their deeds. Yet we who esteem ourselves so 

 much above the aborigines allow a vast race of food-supplying crea- 

 tures to disport themselves before our very eyes and make no effort 

 to utilize them. I mean the cetaceans. But you will say that por- 

 poises are not fit to eat, that their flesh is too tough, coarse and ill- 

 flavored. I have paid so, too, and that recently before the American 

 Fisheries Society. But I have been converted, and my conversion 

 was in this wise. 



On returning from their last cruise on the Hatteras ground, the 

 naturalists of the Fish Commission's steamer Albatross captured and 

 brought in on ice two specimens of the common dolphin {Delphinus 



