THE HERRING AND ITS ALLIES. 395 
“« The Alewife,’’ writes Col. MacDonald, ‘‘ is by far the most abundant 
of our river fishes, and throughout the whole Southern region where they 
are caught, together with the Shad, the number of individuals is not far 
from ten to twenty times as great as that of the Shad. For instance, in 
the Albemarle region, in 1879, 750,000 Shad were taken and upwards of 
20,000,000 Alewives. Again, in 1880, about 600,000 Shad were taken 
from the Potomac and 11,000,000 Alewives. By far the greatest number 
of the Alewives thus taken were ‘‘ Glut Herring,’’ C. est/valis ; but, since 
the two species are sold together, without discrimination, no accurate 
statement of proportional numbers can be made. 
THE BRANCH HERRING OR ALEWIFE. 
There is on Cape Cod an extensive Alewife fishery. This has for more 
than a century been regulated by law, and the fish are allowed during 
stated periods to swim without interruption to their spawning beds. The 
streams in which they are taken are so small, and the fish in their ascent 
so crowded together, that they appear to be extremely abundant, although 
the aggregate catch for the entire Cape is not perhaps much greater than 
the yield of many single seines in the South. Here, however, there has 
been no great decrease in abundance, while in the South the herring fishery 
is much less productive than in former years. * 
A very remarkable phenomenon, recently observed, has been the appear- 
ance of this species in immense numbers in Lake Ontario and lakes of New 
York. This has been only in waters in which shad fry had previously 
been placed by fish culturists. 
Like the Shad, the Alewives are anadromous in habit. The dates of 
their first appearance in any given river may be very closely determined 
