DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES OF SHAD (ALOSA OHTENSIS) 
WITH NOTES ON OTHER FOOD-FISHES OF THE OHIO RIVER. 
By Barton WarREN EVERMANN, 
Ichthyologist of the United States Fish Commission. 
From time to time there have come to the U.S. Fish Commission 
reports of the capture of shad in the Mississippi basin. When 
attempts were made to verify these reports, either no reliable data 
could be secured or the fish thought to be a shad proved to he some 
other species. For example, the ** shad” from the Atchafalaya River, 
in Louisiana, was shown by the present writer in 1897 to be an unde- 
scribed species and genus of the hickory shad family (2orosom7de) 
which was named S/gnalosa atchafalaye. This is a small fish, not 
exceeding afew inches in length, which is used as bait by tbe cat-fish 
fishermen of that river. 
As long ago as 1872 Professor Baird called attention to the occur- 
rence of shad in the Ouachita River, in Arkansas, and Dr. Goldsmith, 
of Vermont, stated that he had several years previously taken shad at: 
the Falls of the Ohio. 
The **shad” now and then reported from the Ouachita, White, and 
St. Francis rivers and other waters in Arkansas proved, in some cases 
at least, to be the hickory shad, Vorosoma cepedianum. Not many of 
the reports from this region, however, have been investigated. A few 
years ago the toothed herring or mooneye (///odon alosoides) became 
unusually common in the Wabash, and, coming as it did, soon after a 
plant of Potomac shad had been made in the Wabash by the U.S. 
Fish Commission upon the recommendation of the late Col. Richard 
W. Thompson, local fishermen were in the habit of referring to it as 
the ** Dick Thompson shad.” 
A newspaper item from Montgomery, W. Va., dated May 20, 1896, 
Says: 
The fishermen hereabouts are having great sport. Large schools of shad, put in 
Elk River by the Government six years ago, are stranded at Lock No. 2 and are being 
scooped out by the hundreds with dip-nets. One man took 300 pounds in two hours. 
Upon seeing this item the Commission addressed a letter of inquiry 
to the postmaster at Montgomery, to which Mr. W. M. Dent replied 
June 5: 
I have sent several of our local fishermen to catch some specimens [of the shad], 
but Iam sorry to say that they are unable to catch them at the present time. A few 
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