74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It should be stated here that the meshes of every purse seine em- 

 ployed in the menhaden industry are two and seven eighths inches 

 square, so that it is practically impossible to capture any imma- 

 ture fishes in these nets. 



Aside from the operations of the factories, menhaden are used 

 as bait for food fishes ; a small quantity is salted and exported to 

 the West Indies, where it is eaten by the negroes ; and many more 

 are plowed into the soil by farmers along the Atlantic coast, as 

 has been the custom for centuries. 



The question of the menhaden being used as food by the food 

 fishes is practically disposed of by Dr. Bean, the ichthyologist of 

 the United States Fish Commission, who testified that, having 

 examined the stomachs of numbers of bluefish and other food 

 fishes, he failed to find any evidence of the menhaden except in 

 the form in which it is used as a bait for "chumming," and 

 only in a very few cases was it present at all. Mr. Atwood, of 

 Bristol County, Massachusetts, whose experience as a practical 

 fisherman extends back to 1816, makes the following interesting 

 statement : 



" The great changes in our fisheries have been caused by the 

 bluefish. . . . When they first appeared in our bay I was living 

 at Long Point (Provincetown), in a little village containing some 

 two hundred and seventy population, engaged in the net fishery. 

 The bluefish affected our fishing (mackerel, menhaden, etc.) so 

 much that the people were obliged to leave the place. Family 

 after family moved away, leaving that locality, which is now a 

 desolate, barren, and sandy waste." Passing over the depreda- 

 tions of the bluefish, Mr. Atwood says, " I firmly believe there is 

 no necessity for the passage of any general legislative act for the 

 protection or regulation of our sea fish and fisheries." 



J. M. Rimbaud, a famous French ichthyologist and practical 

 fisherman, says that the migratory fishes can not be diminished by 

 overfishing ; but that local fishes might be exterminated by con- 

 stantly fishing for them. The Royal Commission appointed by 

 Her Britannic Majesty's Government to inquire into the con- 

 dition of the fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland, which con- 

 sisted of Prof. Thomas Henry Huxley, Right Hon. James Caird, 

 and the Right Hon. George Shaw Lefevre, after three years of 

 exhaustive inquiry reported : " We advise that all acts of Parlia- 

 ment which profess to regulate or restrict the modes of fishing 

 pursued in the open sea be repealed, and that unrestricted free- 

 dom of fishing be pursued hereafter." I heard Prof. Huxley state 

 positively, in 1883, that after many years of study of the question 

 he had come to the conclusion that the supply of migratory fishes, 

 especially the herring, was inexhaustible. 



I think I have now told enough about the non-edible fish in- 



