AN IMPORTANT NEED OF MAN. 319 



CHAPTER H. 

 COAST FISHES AND FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



THE fisheries of the Atlantic coast from Chesapeake Bay 

 to the Gulf of St. Lawrence are so extensive as to cause re- 

 gret that statistics in the catches of many important fishes 

 are not suificiently reliable to form the data necessary^ to a 

 correct report of the numbers and weights annually caught 

 by the thousands of fishermen who keep no account of their 

 takes, but sell them at retail or wholesale, and live on the pro- 

 ceeds, without keeping an account of their expenses. 



THE MACKEREL. 



Coasting New England's rocky shore, 

 Sailing where Southern surges pour, 

 The daring fishers spread the sail 

 To Southern haze and Northern gale. 

 Thousands of craft the ocean speck, 

 Thousands of seamen pace the deck, 

 Eager to follow to the end, 

 Where'er the mackerel shoal may tend. 



This is one of the most important food-fishes of the seas, 

 as well as one of the most prolific. Nature, in the harmoni- 

 ous arrangement of the universe, and in turning all things 

 toward man's good, has made the duration and existence of 

 numerous families of fishes dependent upon their searching 

 out brooding-places and depositing their eggs in the neigh- 

 borhood of man's need. By the process of procreation, these 

 fish form, to a certain extent, home attractions, and dally 

 about the shoals near shore, where they are fished for with 

 the hook, and the more sure means of a drift-net twenty feet 

 deep by one hundred and fifty feet in length, well corked at 

 top, but with no leads at the bottom, for when mackerel are 



