47 
pretty equally distributed to the three geographical 
sections of the Atlantic Sea Board. There is no de- 
crease indicated anywhere in either the New England, 
the Middle or the South Atlantic States. 
The Spanish Mackerel is an important economic 
species, the greater supplies of which during 1880 were 
drawn from the Chesapeake region. Since that time 
the fisheries have been extended and largely developed 
in the South Atlantic and Gulf States. In spite of the 
productive fishing grounds of the Gulf States, we find 
a diminished production of 114,000 pounds in 1892 as 
compared with 1880, the production of the Middle 
Atlantic States having fallen from 1,852,000 pounds 
to 976,008 pounds. This fishery, I think, furnishes 
a marked example of the detrimental influence that 
unrestrained pound net fishing may exercise upon 
a coast species. The larger proportion of the catch 
of Spanish mackerel in the Middle Atlantic States 
is in the Chesapeake Bay by pound nets on the 
eastern and western shores The mackerel enter the 
Bay to spawn; the pound nets are set in the track 
of the run; the fish taken are nearly all spawning fish ; 
and the disposition of the apparatus of capture is 
such as to intercept them almost entirely in their 
approach to waters in which to spawn. In this way 
the great deterioration in the mackerel fishery of the 
Chesapeake is clearly to be attributed to the pound net 
fishing. This species, however, furnishes a clear and 
well-defined instance of deterioration which we can 
fairly attribute to the operations of the fishermen. 
The last species to which I wish to call your attention 
is the squeteague. We find for this species an increase 
of 6,876,000 pounds as compared with 1880; the in- 
crease being general for all the geographical sections in 
which the fisheries are prosecuted. 
In considering the question which I have brought to 
your attention in this paper, it will be interesting to 
