GILPIX ON THE SHAD. 19 



■jiiuch preferred to turbot by fastidious epicures. It has the 

 quality of softness and melting in the mouth, different from the 

 firm flakiness of the salmon or haddock. Coming to us by land, 

 and during the sahnon season, perhaps it has not that attention 

 given it that its savouriness deserves. When salted it affords a 

 geod item of export. In 1860, eight thousand barrels were 

 exported. The exports of later years have not been returned 

 separately from salmon in the blue book of Nova Scotia. As 

 there are few or none on the Atlantic coast of the Province, 

 I have not personally studied their habits, having onl}'' seen the 

 drift fishing of the Avon. Here the boat, with one hundred or 

 one hundred and fifty fathoms of seine payed out from its stern, 

 drifts on the ebb and returns upon the flood, the seine held 

 upon the surface by its head line of floats, being about three 

 fathoms deep. The shad are picked out, meshed at intervals 

 along the seine , which is twisted and knotted into a mass of 

 apparently hopeless and impossible confusion. Father Gavreaux, 

 priest missionary as he records himself, in a capital letter to 

 Mr. Perley, 1850, gives a pleasant account of the shad fisheries 

 among his French people, on the New Brunswick side of the 

 bav of Fundv. He also states that the finest fish are taken at 

 the end of the season, about the middle of September, and that 

 in them, a blue band along the back represents the ordinary 

 green or bluish green color. This is worthy of note as analo- 

 gous with the same change in the gaspereaux, a smaller con- 

 gener of the same family, upon which some naturalists have 

 founded a new species. This letter is filled with numerous 

 facts and remarks upon their food and habits, valuable as com- 

 inof from an intellis^ent, educated and zealous man, and to quote 

 his own words, " seen with mine own eyes, in my own boat, 

 mv St. Peter, when attending weir fishins; for dos: fish on the 

 flood tide, and particularly enjoying myself at low water in 

 catching the flirting shad inside the weir." This is language of 

 an educated observ^er of nature, and is well understood by all 

 who have had the privilege of loitering about and covering them- 

 selves with the mud and sHme of a teeming stake net or weir. 

 Convinced that fishing bj- weirs was destructive to the fish, and 

 that drift fishing was more productive, this gentleman purchased 



