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BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
eggs each season, and it is thought that the minute organisms which form the principal 
part of the food of such fish may not grow sufficiently rapidly or abundantly to supply 
the countless millions of alewives (in addition to other fishes Avith similar food habits) 
which are restricted to this body of water year after year. 
Lack of food pust no doubt be the principal if not the only cause of the excessive 
leanness which is universally recognized and commented on by fishermen, many of 
whom state that a fat alewive is now rarely seen, although during the earlier years the 
fish were quite oily. 
Prof. Charles S. Dolley, of the University of Pennsylvania, in an article in the 
Rochester Post-Express of August 8, 1891, says : 
The probable reason for the death of such large numbers of lish is that they have the habit of 
abstaining from food during the breeding season, and thousands undoubtedly succumb to the fatigues 
of a long swim from the sea against the current of the St. Lawrence, and in their subsequent search 
for suitable spawning-grounds. 
This view is contrary to the observations of Mr. Strowger (page 189) and is 
strongly antagonized by an anonymous writer in the issue of the same paper for Octo- 
ber 28, 1891, who says: 
That the professor was entirely without information on the subject may readily be seen from the 
fact that it is not in the spawning season that the mortality occurs. I doubt if any person ever saw 
eggs in a dead ale wife in the latter part of May or June and beginning of July, in which this mortal- 
ity occurs. They do not die at the spawning season, and they do not perish from fatigue in ascending 
the St. Lawrence River. The alewife, or sawbelly, is always present in Lake Ontario, and * * * 
as a whole does not migrate, although it is not at all improbable that millions of them descend the 
St. Lawrence to the sea in the autumn. 41 
(3) Storms . — Every heavy storm during tbe warmer months is accompanied by the 
washing ashore of greater or less quantities of alewives, and the fishermen in some 
localities have come to regard disturbances of the elements as the most potent factors 
in causing the death of the fish. It is held that the fish are partial to shoals in the 
lake and shallow places near the shore, and that when overtaken there by storms they 
are easily destroyed by the violence of the wind and water. This theory is hardly 
tenable for several reasons, chief among which is that no such mortality is observed 
in other fish that are also known to resort to shoals for feeding and spawning. 
(4) Temperature of water . — The apparent prevalence of the epidemic only during 
the warmer months has induced many fishermen to look upon the elevation of the 
water temperature as the cause of the death of the fish. The highest temperature 
would naturally be found on the shoals, which, as has been stated, are favorite resorts 
of the alewives. 
Mr. S. Wilmot, superintendent of fish-culture for the Dominion of Canada, is quoted 
as favoring this theory: u He attributes the heavy mortality to the higher temperature 
of the lake water in summer time as compared with the ocean, and particularly to the 
fact that these fish seek the shallow and consequently warmer water to spawn, and 
in this way are killed off by thousands.” t This idea is favorably entertained at 
Wilson, Hew York, and other places towards the western end of the lake. 
* See Forest and Stream, September 10, 1891, for further discussion of this question, 
t Ogdensburg Journal. 
