64 
Professor G. Brown Goode, in his report (1877) on the 
American menhaden, has stated : 
“ Again, on the West Coast of Africa occurs a species, 
Brevoortia dorsalis, closely resembling the menhaden. An old 
fisherman of Maine told me that he had seen the menhaden 
in immense quantities on the West Coast of Africa, where the 
negroes spear them and eat them.” 
Why should there not be a West African “Menhaden ” 
fishery of some dimensions? Not much more than twenty 
years ago the American menhaden fisheries were of very 
small importance, and the business of the manufacture of 
oil and guano in its infancy. See what gigantic strides 
this industry has taken, and the proportions and importance 
it has assumed! 
The plant, free from complication, for making oil and 
guano, on a small scale as an experiment, need not cost 
more than £30 or £40. The process of manufacture seems 
simple in the extreme, viz., boiling the fish, skimming off 
the floating oil, pressing (for more oil) and drying the refuse 
which represents the guano; there has to be also, I believe, 
a certain clarification of the expressed oil. 
Hulks anchored outside the naval regulation distance. 
from shore—I think three miles, so as to avoid, it is said, 
the effects of malaria—and thus beyond the action of the 
surf, might be resorted to as floating oil-factories, with the 
requisite supply, for fishing purposes, of hands, canoes and 
boats, and improved gear, to be worked as to fishermen by: 
Krooboys or canoemen of other tribes. The industry might 
be associated with existing mercantile undertakings, per- 
haps through the medium or under the superintendence of 
the Mastérs of the many trading vessels that are to be 
found so long at one time on the coast. The small local 
