THE UTILIZATION OF NEGLECTED FISHES. 
BY CHARLES G. ATKINS. 
In all the fields in which man has sought to turn the pro- 
ductions of organic nature, either animal or vegetable, to his 
own profit, his procedure has been characterized by great waste- 
fulness, but I doubt whether there is one in which this has been 
more pronounced than in the fisheries and the utilization of their 
products. Not only in the preparation of fish for food, is much 
thrown into the gutter that might have gone into the pot, but, to 
go back to the first step, the catching of the fish, there are whole 
tribes of fishes whose capture, unwillingly affected, involves on 
the one hand lamentable sacrifices of time and financial losses, 
and on the other hand destruction of nutritious or otherwise use- 
ful material on a prodigal scale. 
The fresh water fisheries occupy a narrower field than those 
of the sea, and are not characterized by the same degree of pro- 
digality, but even here there is good ground for doubting whether 
the resources of the lakes and rivers are utilized as they should 
be—whether there are not some useful species wholly or partly 
neglected or wasted. There has, to be sure, been important pro- 
gress in recent years, and some species once wholly waste are 
now regularly marketed for food. In Lake Erie, I am informed 
that there still remains, among fish sufficiently large and numer- 
ous to be considered important, a single species that is not 
utilized at all, namely, the ling or lawyer | Lota maculosa], a 
fish quite plentiful in spring and fall, following the different 
run of fish that are spawning—great spawn-eaters they are, and 
also very destructive of the schools of minnows and other small 
fishes. Considerable quantities of them are incidentally caught 
in winter by hook and line through the ice, several tons being 
taken each winter in the vicinity of the islands. They are said 
to be very good for food when smoked like sturgeon, yet they are 
not used.* 
In the sea fisheries, also, we find that there has been com- 
mendable progress in recent years. Several species of fish for- 
merly neglected have come into use as food, in some markets, and 
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*Letter of S. W. Downing. 
