USES OF THE DRUM. 369 



In the Carolina*. according to :i statement of a correspondent, the roe is considered very 

 deli. ions, and it is customary for the residents of the coast to salt and dry them and send them 

 "up country" to their friends as a very acceptable present. 



They are sometimes caught in seines in great numbers and retained living in the seines until 

 disposed of. Their flesh is coarse, but tender, and it is thought to compare favorably with any of 

 the salt-water fish f the region. Drum-flshing with hook and line is one of the most exciting 

 exploits of the sportsmen of this region. In the Nassau River large Drum are taken with hook and 

 line in the spring, and are sold at Fernandina. 



The young Drum are often taken in seines in the Saint John's River and sold in the Jackson- 

 ville market, and are excellent pan-fish, as my own experience testifies. The large fish are often 

 eaten, but are not so much sought after; perhaps the cause of this is that they are liable to be 

 infested by parasitic worms. A Drum of sixty pounds, taken at Wood's Holl, Massachusetts, 

 1864, was completely riddled by nematode worms, neatly encysted among the layers of muscle. 

 Some of them were two feet long, with heads larger than large buck-shot. 



In the Indian River, according to Mr. Clarke, Drum are caught with hooks and crab bait, and 

 with cast-nets. In summer they are caught in the open ocean; in the winter, in the bays and 

 inlets. Four or five a day is considered good fishing luck. Tides do not affect the fishing. Their 

 flesh is not greatly esteemed. They are sometimes salted, but are chiefly used for compost. "In 

 the Gulf of Mexico," says Stearns, " the Drum is often caught in seines and gill-nets, but is very 

 rarely eaten, as the flesh is dry and tasteless. It attains a large size; specimens weighing thirty- 

 five or forty pounds are taken." 



The scales of the Drum are extensively used in the manufacture of the sprays of flowers and 

 other articles of fancy work which are sold, especially in Florida, under the name of "fish-scale 

 jewelry." They are large and silvery, and so hard that it is necessary to remove them from the 

 fish with an axe or hatchet. 



The Drum is interesting to the fishery economists less on account of any intrinsic value in 

 itself, than because of its destructive influence upon the oyster-beds. Concerning its relation to 

 the oyster-culturist, I cannot do better than to quote the words of Mr. Ernest Ingoisoll: "Knowing 

 the carnivorous propensity of the fish, one can easily imagine how an inroad of such a host must 

 aflect an oyster-ground. They do not seem to make any trouble, however, north of New York City, 

 and rarely along the south side of Long Island. At Staten Island and Keyport they come in every 

 few years and devastate tkousands of dollars' worth of property. Such a memorable visitation 

 happened about 1850, in July. The following summer the planters in Prince's Bay, fearing a repe- 

 tition of the onslaught, anchored shingles and pieces of waste tin on their beds, scattering them 

 at short intervals, in the hope that their dancing, glittering surfaces might act as 'scare-crows' to 

 frighten the fish away. Whether as an effect of this, or because of a general absence, no more 

 Drums appeared. In New York Bay, off Caven Point, where the old ' Black Tom Reef is now 

 converted into an island, one planter of Keyport lost his whole summerte work material and 

 labor in a single September week, through an attack by Drums. A City Island planter reported 

 to me a loss of $10,000 in one season a few years ago; but the East River is about the northern 

 limit of the Drums, at least as a nuisance to oyster-culture, so far as I can learn. The vexation of 

 it is, too, that the Drum does not seem to eat half of what he destroys; but, on the contrary, a 

 great school of them will go over a bed, wantonly crushing hundreds of oysters and dropping them 

 nntasted, but in fragments, on the bottom." 1 



1 The great schools in which these fish go are illustrated by the following records from contemporary newspapers: 

 On Monday last John Earle and sons caught, at one draught, in Bristol Ferry, 719 Drum-fish, weighing upwards 

 of fifty pounds each. Niles' Weekly Begitter, July, 1833, also says : " Some days ago a haul was made in Great Egg 



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