MITCHILL ON THE FISHES OF NEW-YORK. 455 



dark spot. A row of four or five other lateral spots sometimes to be 

 counted on different individuals of the same parcel or draught. Tail 

 deeply forked. Scales very easily deciduous. Mouth toothless. Gill- 

 openings ample. 



A row of cuspidated marks, caused by internal bones! on each side of 

 the belly, arising from the carinated edge, and lapping on as it were with 

 the ribs. Is one of nine or ten species ofclupea that visits New- York. 



Rays, Br. 7. P. 15. V. 9. D. 17. A. 19. C. 21. 



We are informed, upon very good authority, that this very species of 

 fish used to spawn in Crumpond, a source of the Peekskill, and in lake 

 Otsego, at the head of the Susquehannah. Thither the herrings went 

 yearly to breed, by the way of the Chesapeake and the Hudson. And 

 they have discontinued their visits only in consequence of being excluded 

 by the mill-dams erected across the stream. 



The like impediments have shut them out of many places on Connec- 

 ticut river, which they formerly frequented. 



During the session of the New- York Legislature, at Albany, in 

 1810, when I was last a representative from the city, in the house of 

 Assembly, there was a strong exertion made to procure the enactment 

 of a statute for facilitating the navigation of the Hudson, between the 

 villages of Troy and Waterford, by constructing a dam with a lock 

 across the river there. I made strenuous opposition to the bill that had 

 been introduced for the purpose. The grounds of my objections were 

 various. But one upon which I considered myself firmlv footed, was 

 the injury which would be wrought to the fisheries in the river by such 

 an obstruction. I contended that by depriving them of access to the 

 places they loved to frequent for the purpose of perpetuating their race, 

 there would be danger of driving them from the river altogether ; and 

 I called upon the delegates from Richmond and King's counties near the 

 ocean, to the members from Washington and Saratoga above, to unite 



