2024 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



Q. If the reporter had said that bluefish had driven the whiting 

 away, it would have been all right? .A. It would have been all right. 



Q. And practically horse-mackerel is the same fish! A. The bluefish 

 of our place and horse mackerel of the shores of Ehode Island is the 

 same fish precisely. 



Q. You don't like horse-mackerel to be put into your mouth instead of 

 bluefish? A. When I say bluefish I mean Tenmodon saltata, but they 

 put down horse-mackerel, and I did not say that. 



Q. That term is not sufficiently scientific. A. I used the term blue- 

 fish, which is our local name; at Ehode Island they call it horse-mack- 

 erel. 



Q. Did this fish, whether called borse-niackerel or bluefish, or by 

 whatever name it is known to naturalists, .drive of the whiting and be 

 an euemy to all fish? A. Yes; it not only drove the fish away, but it 

 diove me off. 



Q. And you are also reported to have said on the same occasion 



When I was a boy, great quantities of Spanish mackerel came into Provincetown 

 Harbor. They afterwards began to diminish in numbers, and I have not seen a speci- 

 men now for twenty years. They went away befor e the bluefish came, and before a 

 weir, trap, pound, or anything of the kind was set in New England waters. I think 

 the great enemy of the fish of our waters is the blnefish. They are ready to eat 

 almost every fish that they can take. We know that they drive almost everything. 



A. I said all that, and I indorse it; but I want to be permitted to 

 make an explanation, because it may be construed that I had made a 

 misstatemeut. When I said Spanish mackerel I meant fully-grown 

 mackerel, which grow two-thirds of the size of our common fully-grown 

 mackerel, and are known to us as Spanish mackerel, but are called 

 great-eyed chub on the coast of Connecticut. That has totally disap- 

 peared. The Spanish mackerel now in the markets of Boston and New 

 York is not the Spanish mackerel of the days of my boyhood. It is 

 another fish belonging to the same family. 



By Mr. Foster: 



Q. There was in your younger days a kind of mackerel very similar to 

 the common mackerel, which went locally by the name of Spanish mack- 

 erel, and which looked so nearly like the common mackerel that ordi- 

 nary fishermen could hardly tell them apart. That fish has disappeared 

 to such an extent that Professor Baird would give $20 fora specimen. 

 A. Yes. 



Q. That is what you referred to ? A. That is the Spanish mackerel I 

 referred to. 



Q. There is another Spanish mackerel which is a very choice food- 

 fish, and which is found to some extent on the southern New England 

 coast, but none are taken north of Cape Cod ! A. We have caught 

 rare specimens. 



Q. The horse-mackerel you were speaking of is a species of tunny ? 

 A. Yes. 



Q. How large have you seen them ? A. Eight feet long, and I should 

 think weighing five or six hundred weight. 



Q. It is very coarse food ? A. I call it so ; we don't make use of it for 

 food as a general tiling. 



Q. Then you come to bluefish. What is generally spoken of in New 

 England as bluefish, sometimes called horse-mackerel and referred to 

 there (printed extract from Captain Alwood's speech) under the name 

 of horse-mackerel, is a fish very fine for food when fresh ? A. It is 

 called very good. 



