14 Bulletin 2, u. s. department of agriculture. 
devour ten thousand million fish, or twenty-five hundred million 
pounds, per day; and for the four months, twelve hundred million 
fish, or three hundred thousand million pounds. Goode 1 applies 
this approximation to the menhaden. He takes the number of men- 
haden as one quarter of the total destruction considered by Baird, 
and supposes that the other predaceous fish combined destroy a 
number equal to that devoured by the bluefish. This justified a divi- 
sion of Baird's estimate by 4 and a multiplication by 2. The coast 
of New England, further, is taken as one-quarter of the Atlantic 
coast of the United States. The number, therefore, should be mul- 
tiplied further by applying the estimate to the winter months also 
during which the destruction by bluefish and the others continues in 
southern waters. Goode finally multiplies Baird's estimate by 10, 
to obtain a figure representing the annual destruction of menhaden 
on the entire coast. The product is three thousand million million ! 
These figures are mere estimates. They serve, however, to show 
that the destruction of .900,000,000 of menhaden by man is insignifi- 
cant when compared to the probable destruction wrought by the 
predaceous inhabitants of the ocean. 2 
OTHER FISH USED IN THE PREPARATION OF FERTILIZERS. 
WASTE FROM DRESSED FISH. 
The discussion of this topic, it should be said in the beginning, 
will have to do with the possible use of other fish in the prepara- 
tion of fertilizer, rather than with the actual use, for the amount of 
fertilizer produced on the Atlantic coast from other fish than the 
menhaden is almost negligible. 
With the exception of the menhaden there are no fish sought on the 
Atlantic coast besides the food fish. As a source of scrap from fish 
other than the menhaden, one would have to look, then, to the waste 
from the food-fish fisheries and to useless fish taken incidentally in 
these. 
According to the statistics of 1908, the latest year for which statis- 
tics are available, 703,525,500 pounds of food fish were caught in the 
Atlantic and Gulf fisheries of the United States. In the dressing 
of fish the waste represents an average of 25 per cent of the " round " 
weight of the fish of the above catch; then, 175,881,375 pounds, or 
78,518 tons, of fish refuse suitable for the preparation of fertilizer 
were produced. This amount would be further augmented by the 
portion of the catch thrown away because of having spoiled in the 
market or because of lack of market and the large number of use- 
less fish, mostly dogfish, taken incidentally. On the supposition 
that this material, consisting of the heads and viscera, contains 10 
1 Loc. cit., p. 109. 
2 In this connection see Kendall, Bull. Bureau of Fisheries, 1908, Pt. I, p. 281, and 
Hathaway, ibid., p. 271. 
