128 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



The entire catch of the eighteen years, as you see by 

 the table, amounts to over 1,000,000 tons, which yielded 

 134,000 tons of nitrogen and phosphoric acid, worth in 

 round numbers $30,000,000 for manurial purposes alone. 



Supposing that all the nitrogen and phosphoric acid 

 required fen* the following-named crops is drawn entirely 

 from this source, we find that the catch of menhaden and 

 the waste fish from other sources for the past eighteen years 

 Avould yield vnoi'e phosphoric acid than is required and suffi- 

 cient nitrogen for 



3,200,000 acres of corn of 50 bushels each, or 

 7,000,000 acres of potatoes of 100 bushels each. 



Need we go further to show the importance of the harvest 

 of the sea in its economic relation to airriculture and to the 

 nation ? Is not every State in the Union, whether it borders 

 on the Atlantic Ocean or lies a thousand miles inland, inter- 

 ested in this harvest? 



Since the menhaden are such a valuable and abundant 

 source of plant food, and evidently designed by nature in 

 some part to restore fertility, why should our fishermen not 

 be allowed to take them from the sea, provided it can be 

 done without injuring any other industry? This, then, is 

 the problem. 



The Menhaden and Blue-eish. 



You will notice by the table that the catch of menhaden 

 has fallen off each year from 1884. This year it will not 

 be over 15,000 tons of dry scrap. The falling off immedi- 

 ately after 1884 was partly due to the fact that the fish did 

 not come to our waters ; but since 1888, either because the 

 waters have been warmer or the vegetation better, menhaden 

 iiave come in greater numbers, some years in enormous 

 bodies ; yet, owing to the location of the fish and to injudicious 

 legislation, our fishermen have not been able to take them. 



The injudicious legislation to which I refer is the result 

 of a feeling that the taking of menhaden in a wholesale way, 

 by the new and im[)roved methods, is rol)l)ing the food fish, 

 especially the blue-fish, of their sustenance ; also that the 

 spawn of the food fish is destroyed, and the fish themselves, 



