PLEADINGS. 225 



318,000 barrels, "being 83,000 barrels more than in any previous year 

 for twenty years. This last year there was a falling off of 50,000 barrels. 



I pass now to speak of our menhaden. In my early manhood I looked 

 with surprise upon the vast quantity of these fish that visited our coast 

 annually and then went away. At that time they seemed of no use, 

 except that the fishermen used them occasionally for bait. But since 

 they have become valuable for their oil and as a fertilizer, the question 

 has been discussed with much interest whether they will be extermi- 

 nated in consequence of the great extent to which this fishery is prose- 

 cuted. The Maine legislature some few years ago passed a law prohibit- 

 ing the seining of them, and, after it had been in force a single year, the 

 same parties who had signed the petition for the law were very desirous 

 of having it repealed. I was called before a committee of that legisla- 

 ture, and gave it as my opinion that the efforts of man would have but 

 little tendency to exterminate this species of fish, the number caught 

 being but very trifling compared with the immense quantities that were 

 produced in the waters. The legislature did not repeal the law, but, 

 they authorized the county commissioners along the coast to grant per- 

 mits — for the sum of twenty dollars each — allowing parties to fish for 

 the menhaden in the prohibited localities. The fishing has gone on 

 since that time, and, so far from the menhaden being exterminated, I am 

 informed that they were very abundant last year. 



When do menhaden spawn ? The mass of them, as is well known, 

 pass off the coast in the latter part of the autumn. They keep passing- 

 out ; and, in our Provincetown Harbor, where the land crooks round so 

 as to detain them, we catch them a month later than that. When we 

 look at the last of the menhaden we find that the ovaries begin to swell, 

 and that the eggs begin to grow. When they get off the coast of Vir- 

 ginia, immense quantities of them spawn. The mass of the menhaden go 

 away so far south that they do not get to our coast in the fall, but are 

 off the capes of Delaware, above and below. I believe that the last ones 

 that come out deposit their spawn soon after their departure, so that 

 their young return to our harbor very soon afterward, for we find often 

 one or two hundred there about that time. But when the year comes 

 around again, we find the full-grown menhaden coming in in vast 

 abundance. 



Again, take the sea-herring. When the Georges fishermen went to 

 the Georges Banks, there were great schools of them there, but they 

 have long since disappeared, and now fishermen cannot get enough to 

 bait their hooks with. They come up about the islands of Boston Har- 

 bor, and to another locality off Scituate, where they are, in the fall, in 

 immense quantities depositing spawn. A fisherman who put out six 

 nets had them all carried to the bottom the first night. They were 

 filled with such vast numbers of fishes that he could raise only two of 

 them, and from these he obtained enough fish for the rest of the season. 

 This shows to how great an extent these fish change their localities. 



jSTow, this depletion of fish at certain points is not caused by over- 

 fishing. We know that it has not resulted from the setting of any 

 weirs, traps, or pounds, because none of these have been used in these 

 localities. 



In the days of my boyhood, my neighbors often spoke of a fish called 

 " the drummer," which is the same variety that you call the squeteague, 

 which were so plentiful that they could be taken by the boat-load. But 

 in 1816, when I first went into a fishing-boat, they had disappeared, and 

 I did not see a single specimen for many years. Since that time, how- 

 ever, they have commenced returning in considerable numbers, and we 

 S. Mis. 61 15 



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