American Fisheries Society. 185 
Mr. W. R. Hollaway, U. 8. Consul-General at Halifax, N. S., 
sent the following letter to the Department of State, dated June 
30th, 1904, in regard to the utilization of waste fishes : 
The Halifax Chronicle publishes an interview with an ardent 
amateur fisherman who told of experiments and researches among 
the so-called dogfish, albacores and skates. He said his experiments 
as to the habits of the fish when alive and their edible qualities when 
dead had covered a number of years. He had discovered many 
things which no doubt the majority of the fishermen in the Mari- 
time provinces would scoff at, but nevertheless they were facts and 
anyone with a mind to investigation could soon find it out for him- 
self. 
Speaking of dogfish in particular, he said that the flesh of this 
fish when properly cooked was one of the most delicious dishes im- 
aginable—the meat being firm, white and sweet. Fishermen gener- 
ally were of the opinion that dogfish is an oily fish, but as a matter 
of fact it is not—no more so than the codfish, because, like the lat- 
ter, the oil is all contained in the liver. The flesh lends itself readily 
to drying and salting, and in such countries as Italy and Spain, 
where the fish is so well known, large quantities are cured. 
He suggested that this might be worth looking into, that is, the 
possibility of finding foreign markets for cured dogfish, when a new 
field of money-making would be thrown open to the fishermen of the 
Maritime provinces. Certainly the fish could be disposed of in the 
Italian settlements of the near-at-hand cities, like Boston and New 
York, and even in local centres like Sydney. A few enterprising 
men should make the experiment on a small! scale. Certainly, if the 
experiment was not a success they would be very little out of pocket. 
Then as to skates, many fishermen who have spent their lives at 
the business, know that a single skate will demolish more lobsters 
in @ season than any one, or possibly two, of their pots will catch. 
Fishermen as a rule are not observing. They will go on year 
after year, catching the well known varieties, but they seldom take 
any trouble to study the habits of the fish—why they move in cer- 
tain directions at certain seasons, what they eat on the passage, and 
where they go to. Skates can be taken at almost all seasons, and if 
the stomach of one should be opened it would be found, in almost 
every case, to be full of lobster, shell and all, for the mouth of this 
voracious fish is so constructed that the toughest lobster shell can 
be ground almost into dust. It is the skate that is doing more to 
deplete the lobster fishery than almost any other agency. And yet 
this same skate is an edible fish, being somewhat similar to the well- 
known “flounder” or ‘‘flat-eye” in taste; then, too, it contains more 
glue than almost any other fish that swims, which alone would make 
it profitable to catch, provided there were factories handy in which 
