REGULATION OF THE SEA-FISHERIES BY LAW. 89 



abundant, until within the time mentioned, except the scup, about which 

 there is a -tradition that it first became known in Buzzard's Bay, in 1793, 

 since which time it has always frequented the waters south of Cape 

 Cod. 



Up to about 1851, no means of taking these fishes were commonly in 

 use, except the hand-line, with a baited hook. 



All but one were caught at the bottom, upon their feeding-grounds, 

 with a still bait. 



The exception, the striped bass, was fished for, for the most part, 

 among the rocks near the shore, by throwiug and hauling an eel or 

 other bait, or sometimes in the tide-ways, and at the bottom, with 

 shrimp or dead or living fish, and in the surf with a bait floating upon 

 or under the surface of the water. 



They were all caught in large numbers throughout the entire season, 

 except the tautog, which appeared in the spring and again in the au- 

 tumn. 



The catching of these fishes gave employment to thousands of fisher- 

 men, and furnished a cheap and wholesome article of food to all the 

 inhabitants upon the sea-shore. 



The supply was always fully equal to the demand. When, however, 

 railroads began to provide easier and quicker means of transportation, 

 when ice came to be used to prevent or retard decomposition, and when 

 the fishes came into more general use as one of the ingredients of fer- 

 tilizing compounds, wholesale methods of catching them, more or less 

 ingenious, were devised to supply the demand thus artificially created. 

 Then traps, pounds, and weirs were brought into use, and have in- 

 creased in numbers and efficiency from year to year, and, as they did, 

 the hook-and-line fishermen caught fewer and fewer of fish, during a 

 shorter portion of the season, and these smaller and smaller in size, 

 until within two or three years hardly any of the fishes of the varieties 

 named could be caught by the common practice of hook-and-line 

 fishing. 



As. a consequence, men who had followed it heretofore for a livelihood 

 gave it up and became trappers themselves, and those who had occa- 

 sionally pursued it to supply themselves and their families with food, 

 or for recreation and amusement, have been obliged to abandon it alto- 

 gether, or be content to spend weary and toilsome hours to capture the 

 few stragglers that have escaped the toils of the more crafty and ingen- 

 ious fishermen. 



So well convinced did the people become that the multiplication of 

 traps and pounds and the growing scarcity of fish stood to each other 

 in the relation of cause and effect, that in 1870, simultaneously in Mas- 

 sachusetts and Ehode Island, legislative investigation was demanded, 

 and, to a certain extent, obtained, with a view to such action as should 

 check the evil and prevent the much-feared destruction of these valua- 

 ble and important fishes. 



In what I shall have further to say on the subject, I shall confine my 

 remarks as to those investigations to the " Beport of the committee on 

 fisheries, to the legislature of Massachusetts," the " Majority and mi- 

 nority reports of the committee on fisheries in Ehode Island, January 

 session, 1870," to the "Beport of the joint special committee of the 

 general assembly of Ehode Island, appointed to examine into the fish- 

 eries 6f Narragansett Bay," to the speech of Mr. Atwood, of the Cape 

 district, chairman of the Massachusetts committee, in support of his re- 

 port, and to a general review of the facts elicited by those investiga- 

 tions, and to the reasoning upon them. 



