BLUE-FISHING. 287 



out that he wanted a hundred moss-bunkers. Chum 

 is bait, usually moss-bunker, bony-fish or menhaden, 

 three names for the same creature, chopped up 

 fine with a hatchet and thrown overboard from 

 time to time, while the fisherman puts larger and 

 more alluring pieces on his hook. The chum gives 

 out an oil which floats on the water and attracts the 

 blue-fish, while the bait catches them. As the men- 

 haden is oily and nasty to handle it is not a pleas- 

 ant nor clean style of fishing, but it is the only 

 mode of taking blue-fish which is possible within 

 the bay, where sea-weed usually runs so thickly as 

 to cover a trolling squid faster than it could be got 

 out the length of the line, and often to interfere 

 greatly with the hooks while chumming. There is 

 a machine made especially, something on the prin- 

 ciple of a patent sausage chopper, to grind up moss- 

 bunkers into minute pieces, but it gets foul if not 

 cleaned carefully, and is not much used except by 

 the oAvners of boats, that make a business of taking 

 parties out blue-fishing, so that it is called into em- 

 ployment daily. 



Probably no two more discordantly harmonious 

 elements could be brought together than the Super- 

 intendent and the Commissioner. Each has the 

 firm conviction that what he does not know about 

 fishing is not only not worth knowing but does not 

 exist. They are both so calmly convinced of this 

 fact, and serenely set in their ways, that they utter- 

 ly ignore not alone the suggestions of the outside 

 fishing world, but also of one another. Strange as 



