THE HERRING AND ITS ALLIES . 
397 
than in that of the Shad, since with the former, owing to its peculiar 
spawning habits, the eggs stand a better chance of hatching out, and very 
slight protection of the fish during spawning season will be sufficient to 
keep up the supply.” 
Prof. Baird, in his second report as Commissioner of Fisheries, spoke 
as follows upon the uses and importance of this fish: 
“ I am inclined to think, for various reasons, that too little has been 
done in our waters toward the restoration to their primitive abundance of 
the Alewife. 
“ The Alewife in many respects is superior, in commercial and econo¬ 
mical value, to the Herring, being a much larger and sweeter fish, and 
more like the true Shad in this respect. Of all American fish none are so 
easily propagated as the Alewife, and waters from which it has been driven 
by the erection of impassable dams can be fully restocked in the course of 
a few years, simply by transporting a sufficient number of the mature fish 
taken at the mouth of the stream to a point above the dams, or placing 
them in ponds or lakes. Here they will spawn and return to the sea after 
a short interval, making their way over dams which carry any flow. The 
young Alewives, after a season, descend and return, if not prevented, at 
the end of their period of immaturity, to the place where they were spawned. 
“In addition to the value of the Alewife as an article of food, it is of 
much service in ponds and rivers as nutriment for trout, salmon and other 
valuable fishes. The young derive their sustenance from minute crusta¬ 
ceans and other objects too diminutive for the larger fish, and in their great 
abundance are greedily devoured by the other species around them. In 
waters inhabited by both pickerel and trout these fish find in the young 
Alewives sufficient food to prevent their preying upon each other. They 
are also, for the same reason, serviceable in ponds containing black bass. 
“As a cheap and very abundant food for other fishes, the young Alewives 
can be placed in waters that have no connection with the sea by merely 
transferring from any convenient locality a sufficient number of the living 
mature parents, taken at the approach of the spawning season; they will 
remain for several months, and indeed can often be easily penned up by 
a suitable dam and kept throughout the year. 
“ It is in another still more important connection that we should con¬ 
sider the Alewife. It is well known that within the last thirty or forty 
years the fisheries of cod, haddock and hake along our coast have measur¬ 
ably diminished, and in some places ceased entirely. Enough may be 
taken for local consumption, but localities which formerly furnished the 
material for an extensive commerce in dried fish have been entirely 
abandoned. Various causes have been assigned for this condition of 
things, and among others the alleged diminution of the sea Herring. 
After a careful consideration of the subject, however, I am strongly in- 
