32 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OP FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Point Judith and Providence; and the same unexplained cause can be 

 shown by facts of every fish that inhabit our waters. For ten years 

 there have not been blue crabs about here. This year the water was alive 

 with them about as large as a three cent piece, and probably iu a year 

 or two they will be as thick as they used to be when you could catch 

 easy three bushels at a tide. Ten years ago there were twenty square 

 miles of blue muscles off Hyannis. In a few years they disappeared. 



" Tell me where I can see you, and I will come and talk with you. I 

 should like for you to come to Round Pond, Maine, and I would see that 

 you were shown this fish question as you ought to see it, by going among 

 the fishermen and observing its practical workings. I would furnish 

 you every facility, and I think you would like it. I shall be in New 

 Bedford within a fortnight, and if you are to be in that vicinity, let me 

 know, and 1 will find you if my business will let me. 



" Write me, and send your letter to Pound Pond, Maine. 



"DAVID T. CHURCH. ' 

 " Professor Baird." 



Nattshon Island, Vineyard Sound, 



August 23, 187 1, 



Testimony of Peter Davis, of Noank, who has two pounds in Buz- 

 zard's Bay, on the northwest side of Naushon : 



I have been here all the spring ; got in about the first of May or last 

 of April. A few scup were here then. They caught them westward of 

 us before we put down. I think most of the scup had gone by on the 

 1st of May ; they were the first fish we caught. 



My idea about fish striking the shore is, that they strike in square 

 from deep water when they find the water of a certain temperature. 

 They run close to the shore, and, if the shore rises gradually, they will 

 come in very close to it, into very shoal water. We have caught plenty 

 of small scupj and they are plenty now. They are five or six inches 

 long. We first caught these small ones about the last of June 5 none of 

 them earlier than that. We get very few big scup now. I have made 

 up my mind this year that scup grow pretty fast. I think a year-old 

 scup weighs about three-quarters of a pound. We get some that don't 

 weigh over half a pound that I think were spawned this spring. 



I have fished at Montauk five or six years. We have caught a few 

 stingarees here, but do not catch many now ^ it is late in the season for 

 them, I think. We used to get them up at Montauk until the last of 

 July and into August. I do not recollect but three kinds of stingarees 

 caught here. We are not paying expenses now. We got some mack- 

 erel early, and we get a few squeteague. Blue-fish have been more plenty 

 this year than last. They are a very uncertain fish, anyway. They are 

 somewhere, of course, but they don't show themselves all the time. I 

 don't think there is any greater variety of sharks and rays at Montauk 

 than here. We used to get a silver-fish there that weighed forty pounds. 

 The scales were two and one-half inches, and looked as if they had 

 been plated. The fish was shaped a good deal like the salmon. They 

 had a curious-shaped mouth, that seemed to have a joint in it, where 

 the lower jaw slid into the upper one.* Squeteague eat scup either in 

 or out of the pounds ; they are as voracious as blue-fish. We get for 



* Probably Megalojts thrissoides. 



