REPORTS OF STORAGE HOLDINGS. 29 
In order to relieve the congestion of the work of compilations at 
the first of the month, incidental to the preparation of other storage 
reports, and thus enable the Bureau to handle its work more economi- 
ally, the reports for fish are obtained for the fifteenth of each month. 
When these reports were begun, many firms did not have sufficient 
records to enable them to furnish exact data. For this reason the 
reports for the months of October to December, inclusive, are omitted 
from this review. However, a very accurate tabulation of the stocks 
for these dates is found in the tables comparing the holdings of 1918 
with those of 1917. 
. Exceptionally complete reports have been obtained from the ware- 
houses storing fish. Reports have been received from every firm on 
the list of the Bureau for every month during 1918 except that one 
firm failed to report its holdings for July. For several months reports 
' from a few firms were received too late to be included in the report 
for that month. Their holdings are included in the revised tabula- 
tions in this bulletin. 
The descriptions of the different varieties of fish quoted hereafter 
are selected from the report of the Bureau of the Census on Fisheries 
of the United States, 1908. 
BLUEFISH. 
This is “a very gamy food fish found on the Atlantic and Gulf 
Coasts. On the coast of the New England and Middle States, it is 
called ‘blue fish’; in Rhode Island, ‘horse mackerel’; south of Cape 
Hatteras, ‘skip jack’; in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, 
‘tailor’ and ‘greenfish’; in the Gulf of Mexico, ‘blue fish.’ They vary 
in weight from 1 to 20 pounds, according to the season and locality. 
Large numbers are caught during the summer with nets, traps, seines, 
and hand lines.”’ 
On January 15, 1918, the reports to the Bureau showed stocks of 
156,664 pounds. The holdings decreased until July 1, when less than 
25,000 pounds remained in cold storage. There was a slight increase 
from July 15 to August 15, but the most of the holdings of the season 
were placed in cold storage between August 15 and September 15. 
| The increase in stocks during that time amounted to 176,753 pounds. 
The largest quantity reported during the year was held on October 15, 
* and amounted to a little more than 275,000 pounds. This quantity 
was more than 50 per cent greater than the holdings of the same date 
in 1917. The quantity of bluefish frozen during 1918 amounted to 
approximately one-third of one per cent of the total fish frozen during 
the year, 
