588 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



by both pickerel and trout these fish find in the young Alewives sufficient food to prevent their 

 preying upon each other. They are also, for the same reason, serviceable in ponds containing 

 black bass. 



"As a cheap and very abundant food for other fishes, the young Alewives can be placed in 

 waters that have no connection with the sea by merely transferring from any convenient locality 

 a sufficient number of the living mature parents, taken at the approach of the spawning season ; 

 they will remain for several months, and, indeed, can often be easily penned up by a suitable dam 

 and kept throughout the year. 



" It is in another still more important connection that we should consider the Alewife. It is 

 well known that within the last thirty or forty years the fisheries of cod, haddock, and hake along 

 our coast have measurably diminished, and in some places ceased entirely. Enough may be taken 

 for local consumption, but localities which formerly furnished the material for an extensive com- 

 merce in dried fish have been entirely abandoned. Various causes have been assigned for this 

 condition of things, and among others the alleged diminution of the sea Herring. After a careful 

 consideration of the subject, however, I am strongly inclined to believe that it is due to the dimi- 

 nution, and in many instances to the extermination, of the Alewives. As already remarked, before 

 the construction of dams in the tidal rivers the Alewife was found in incredible numbers along our 

 coast, probably remaining not far from shore, excepting when moving up into the fresh water, and 

 at any rate spending a considerable interval off the mouths of the rivers either at the time of their 

 journey upward or on their return. The young, too, after returning from the ocean, usually 

 swarmed in the same localities, and thus furnished for the larger species a bait such as is not 

 supplied at present by any other fish, the sea Herring not excepted. We know that the Alewife 

 is particularly attractive as a bait to other flslies, especially for cod and mackerel. Alewives 

 enter the streams on the south coast of New England before the arrival of the bluefish; but the 

 latter devote themselves with great assiduity to the capture of the young as they come out from 

 their breeding ponds. The outlet of an alewife pond is always a capital place for the bluefish, 

 and, as they come very near the shore in such localities, they can be caught there with the line by 

 what is called 'heaving and hauling,' or throwing a squid from the shore and hauling it in with 

 the utmost rapidity. 



"The coincidence, at least, in the erection of the dams, and the enormous diminution in the 

 number of the Alewives, and the decadence of the inshore cod fishery, is certainly very remarka- 

 ble. It is probable, also, that the mackerel fisheries have suffered in the same way, as these fish 

 find in the young Menhaden and Alewives an attractive bait. 



" The same remarks as to the agency of the Alewife in attracting the deep-sea fishes to the 

 shores, and especially near the mouths of rivers, apply in a proportional degree to the Shad and 

 salmon." 



177. ON THE OCCURRENCE OF THE BRANCH ALEWIFE IN CERTAIN LAKES OF NEW YORK. 



By Tarleton H. Bean. 



The Branch Alewife, G. vernalis, Mitchill, has of late years attracted considerable attention 

 in Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, New York, and in Lake Ontario. The United States National 

 Museum has received a great many individuals from each of these lakes, and upon examination 

 they were all found to be the species above named. This would be expected from the well-known 

 habits of the Branch Alewife, which ascends far up the streams and pushes its way into the inte- 

 rior, while, on the other hand, its relative, the Glut Alewife, appears never to penetrate far beyond 



