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as pork was always designated. The story istold of a 
well-to-do family in Hadley, which was always an aris- 
tocratic town, who, hearing a knock at the door just as 
they were about to dine on this tabooed fish, incontin- 
ently hid the platter under the bed. Indeed, so ground 
into popular sensibility was this ancient prejudice, that 
as recently as forty years ago members of the Connecti- 
cut Legislature were sometimes taunted with the epithet 
of “shad eaters.” The radical change of appreciation 
which has taken place since can be realized when we find 
these same people boasting now of the superlative quality 
of their shad as compared with all others in the market. 
Not until forty years before the Revolution was this 
economic ban removed and shad became a merchantable 
commodity. Connecticut shad in barrels were first ad- 
vertised in Boston in 1736, though they were current in 
river towns for at least three years previous at one penny 
a-piece. By 1773 prices had advanced to two or three 
pence, and in 1778 several thousand barrels were put up 
for the Continental troops. In 1779 the price reached 
four pence ha’penny, and after the dam was placed at 
South Hadley Falls in 1795 the number of shad in the 
river perceptibly diminished and the price gradually ad- 
vanced to six pence, nine pence, one shilling, and then 
higher, until men ceased to buy shad to barrel for 
family use. Thenceforward they became a fancy fish 
and a luxury, even replacing the salmon, which had _al- 
ways maintained a high precedence, but had now also 
disappeared by reason of the dams which obstructed 
their ascent of the river. 
Shad never passed the Bellows Falls, at Walpole, 
New Hampshire, nor the falls of the Chicopee river, in 
Massachusetts, though salmon surmounted both. 
In 1739, according to Sylvester Judd, the historian, 
the town of Brookfield petitioned the General Court for 
leave to make a fishway for shad through the ledges of 
rocks across the Chicopee at Springfield, so that they 
might come up the river into the ponds, but Springfield 
