An important Nerep or May. 319 
CHAPTER I. 
COAST FISHES AND FISHERIES OF TIE UNITED STATES. 
Tue fisheries of the Atlantic coast from Chesapeake Bay 
to the Gulf of St. Lawrence are so extensive as to cause re- 
gret that statistics in the catches of many important fishes 
are not sufficiently reliable to form the data necessary to a 
correct report of the numbers and weights annually caught 
by the thousands of fishermen who keep no account of their 
takes, but sell them at retail or wholesale, and live on the pre- 
ceeds, without keeping an account of their expenses. 
THE MACKEREL 
Coasting New England’s rocky shore, 
Sailing where Southern surges pour, 
The daring fishers spread the sail 
To Southern haze and Northern gale. 
Thousands of craft the ocean speck, 
Thousands of seamen pace the deck, 
Eager to follow to the end, 
Where’er the mackerel shoal may tend. 
This is one of the most important food-fishes of the seas, 
as well as one of the most prolific. Nature, in the harmoni- 
ous arrangement of the universe, and in turning all things 
toward man’s good, has made the duration and existence of 
numerous families of fishes dependent upon their searching 
out brooding-places and depositing their eggs in the neigh- 
borhood of man’s need. By the process of procreation, these 
fish form, to a certain extent, home attractions, and dally 
about the shoals near shore, where they are fished for with 
the hook, and the more sure means of a drift-net twenty feet 
deep by one hundred and fifty feet in length, well corked at 
top, but with no leads at the bottom, for when mackerel are 
