﻿14 BULLETIN 2, tt. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



devour ten thousand million fish, or twenty-five hundred million 

 pounds, per day; and for the four months, twelve hundred million 

 fish, or three hundred thousand million pounds. Goode 1 applies 

 this approximation to the menhaden. He takes the number of men- 

 haden as one quarter of the total destruction considered by Baird, 

 and supposes that the other predaceous fish combined destroy a 

 number equal to that devoured by the bluefish. This justified a divi- 

 sion of Baird's estimate by 4 and a multiplication by 2. The coast 

 of New England, further, is taken as one-quarter of the Atlantic 

 coast of the United States. The number, therefore, should be muh 

 tiplied further by applying the estimate to the winter months also 

 during which the destruction by bluefish and the others continues in 

 southern waters. Goode finally multiplies Baird's estimate by 10, 

 to obtain a figure representing the annual destruction of menhaden 

 on the entire coast. The product is three thousand million million ! 

 These figures are mere estimates. They serve, however, to show 

 that the destruction of 900,000,000 of menhaden by man is insignifi- 

 cant when compared to the probable destruction wrought by the 

 predaceous inhabitants of the ocean. 2 



OTHER FISH USED IN THE PREPARATION OF FERTILIZERS. 



WASTE FROM DRESSED FISH. 



The discussion of this topic, it should be said in the beginning, 

 will have to do with the possible use of other fish in the prepara- 

 tion of fertilizer, rather than with the actual use, for the amount of 

 fertilizer produced on the Atlantic coast from other fish than the 

 menhaden is almost negligible. 



With the exception of the menhaden there are no fish sought on the 

 Atlantic coast besides the food fish. As a source of scrap from fish 

 other than the menhaden, one would have to look, then, to the waste 

 from the food-fish fisheries and to useless fish taken incidentally in 

 these. 



According to the statistics of 1908, the latest year for which statis- 

 tics are available, 703,525,500 pounds of food fish were caught in the 

 Atlantic and Gulf fisheries of the United States. In the dressing 

 of fish the waste represents an average of 25 per cent of the " round " 

 weight of the fish of the above catch; then, 175,881,375 pounds, or 

 78,518 tons, of fish refuse suitable for the preparation of fertilizer 

 were produced. This amount would be further augmented by the 

 portion of the catch thrown away because of having spoiled in the 

 market or because of lack of market and the large number of use- 

 less fish, mostly dogfish, taken incidentally. On the supposition 

 that this material, consisting of the heads and viscera, contains 10 



'Loc. cit., p. 109. 



3 In this connection see Kendall, Bull. Bureau of Fisheries, 1908, Pt. I, p. 281, and 

 Hathaway, ibid., p. 271. 



