124 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



food because they contain nitrogen and phosphoric acid, — 

 two important elements in the building up of plants. This 

 nitroo-en which we obtain from fish is termed orsranic nitro- 

 gen, because it was at one time a part of a living organism. 

 It is, however, no better organic nitrogen than is found in 

 many other organic substances, especially dried blood and 

 meat, now obtained from hundreds of slaughter-houses 

 throughout the country, which used to go to waste, or be 

 fed to pigs and converted by them into pork that it is no 

 wonder the Jews refused. The nitrogen obtained from fish 

 is probably not equal as an active agent to many of the 

 chemical salts, such as sulphate of ammonia and nitrate of 

 soda, but nevertheless it is a most valuable, and I might 

 say almost indispensable, source of fertility; and, from an 

 economic stand-point, not only should every pound of refuse 

 fish be utilized, as it is to-day, but in my judgment every 

 fish that can be got out of the sea should be taken, whether 

 it be by line, trap, beam-trawl or purse-seine, for the reason 

 that the world wants cheap food, both for plants and for 

 mankind. 



While we now utilize all the refuse from the large fisheries 

 upon the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, such as fish skins, fish 

 heads and fish oftal, which is dried and i)repared for agricult- 

 ural uses, — and it amounts to thousands of tons yearly, — 

 yet the great source of plant food in the sea is the menhaden, 

 a most abundant species, which swim along our shores in 

 immense schools from Florida to Maine. As we shall see, 

 they appear to be the scavengers of the sea, and a means, it 

 would seem, of restoring in some measure the fertilit}' that 

 has been squandered by a wasteful huslmndry. 



Touching the food of the menhaden, Prof. Brown Goode, 

 the head of the Smithsonian Institute, in his admirable paper 

 on the " Biography of the Menhaden," to which I am indel)ted 

 for much information and many interesting quotations, writes 

 as follows : — 



"The nature of the food of the menhaden has been closely 

 studied. Hundreds of specimens have been dissected, and every 

 stomach examined by me has been found full of dark, greouish- 

 brown mud or silt, such as occurs near the mouth of rivers and on 

 the bottom of still bays and estuaries. . . . The plain inference 



