your theory?—A. We know where they are taken in the summer, and we see them go away.

Q. But you do not go down to the bottom to see this?-A. I am quite sure that they do so, and that the mackerel off Provincetown and the coast of Massachusetts and along other parts of our coast go south, and head off somewhere near Nantucket. We know, at all events, that they are gone, and we do not see them again until early in the following spring.

Q. I want to obtain from you a distinct answer with reference to trawling; is it not a most destructive mode of fishing?-A. The first trawling we knew of on our coast was done by an Irish crew, who came in a little schooner from Boston, and afterward our people began to practice it one after another until about the whole fishery was so carried on. They abolished hand-line fishing and began to trawl all along our bay, it being the most expeditious mode of fishing; owing to this practice fish began to be scarcer and scarcer around our shores. Even in Barnstable Bay, and at Provincetown, where I live, we used to catch fish during the winter; but now, owing to trawling, no fish are to be found there during the winter, as formerly was the case. Thus trawling has injured that fishing-ground.

Q. Then I understand you to say that this mode of fishing with trawls is injurious?-A. Yes; to the inshore fisheries.

Q. And is it not injurious to the fisheries at large, and are not the mother fish, which will not bite under ordinary circumstances, thus taken ?-A. Well, I suppose that trawls do catch the mother fish-fish with as well as fish without spawn. If the mother fish were not taken, this would increase the number of fish, but we cannot fish in any possible way successfully without diminishing their number; and when we look at the fecundity of the fish and see how wonderful it is

Q. If they were not wonderfully plenty, they would not be caught on your coast at all. Is it not a very injurious mode of fishing, in your judgment?-A. Trawls take up the fish from the ground more readily and more rapidly than is the case with hand-lines.

Q. Do you really say that, in your judgment, trawling is a proper mode of fishing Speaking as a practical man and as one acquainted with these fisheries, would you recommend the United States Government to permit it?-A. Well, I do not say but what it would be best to abandon trawl-fishing all round the shore, and purse-seining, and go back to the hook-and-line business again. I think that this would be the better plan, on the whole.

Q. You say that squid in former years were very plentiful on your coast-A. Yes; they were scarce and afterward plentiful again. I think that about 1872 or 1873, for two or three years, the squid were very abundant in our waters, and more plentiful than I ever knew them to be at any previous time. In 1867 I investigated into the habits more particularly of fishes, to prepare myself for the delivery of a course of. lectures at the Lowell Institute; but during the whole of that season I could not see a single squid anywhere about Cape Cod.

Q. Did they ever come back again?—A. Yes; in 1873 they were more abundant than I ever knew them to be.

Q. Then did they disappear?-A. Now they have got scarce again. Q. Have you any idea what has driven them away?-A. No, I cannot form any idea.

Q. Haven't you got a fish there that they call the bluefish, which is very destructive?-A. Yes; they came north of Cape Cod in 1847 and disarranged our fisheries.

Q. And they have come every year since?-A. Yes.

Q. You never knew them before 1847?-A. Never north of Cape Cod. Q. Don't they destroy the squid?—A. They were very destructive to the squid. They depopulated the bay of almost all the fish there was there. Not only that, but they drove the people off away from the vil lages and from their homes, if I may say so. I was living at Long Point, Povincetown, engaged in the mackerel fisheries, as I stated yesterday. We prosecuted that fishery and supported our families, and we lived in what was considered comfortable circumstances, according to a fisherman's idea, but in 1847 this bluefish made its appearance. I went out one night with a boy and got 1,000 mackerel, which was considered a very good night's work. Next night when I came to haul in the nets I supposed I was going to get a good haul, and to my suprise and disappointment I found two great, long, savage-looking bluefish and some dozen or so of mackerel. Now, the mackerel all went away, and that drove them off. We had 270 of a population on that point, and we moved away family after family.

Q. That was the result of the destruction of the fishery. Now they have come there every year since?-A. Yes. The squid have gradually disappeared year after year.

Q. Is it not your opinion- A. I was going on to say that the squid diminished and became less and less year after year until 1867. I did not see a single specimen for the whole summer that I investigated more particularly than any other year.

Q. And the squid have come back?-A. Yes; but they are now going away again.

Q. Have the bluefish not driven them away again?-A. I do not know about driving them away. The bluefish eat them as quick as they can get hold of them. They will probably drive them away.

Q. Is it not likely that the squid would be very plentiful?-A. They would be more so than they are if there were no bluefish; there was always squid in my boyhood.

Q. In your opinion it necessarily follows that the bluefish have driven them away?-A. They have had a great effect upon them.

Q. Haven't you stated so in some of your lectures or in addresses in the Massachusetts legislature?—A. Probably I did. It was true.

Q. You used these words-I am now quoting from some remarks I think you made in relation to this matter in the senate chamber on the 19th April, 1870. You say this:

But the great change that has taken place in our fisheries has been caused by the return of the bluefish. This species was abundant on our coast many years ago. We are informed that in a journal of the first settlement of the island of Nantucket, written by Zacheus Macy, 1792, and contained in the Massachusetts Historical Collection, he says a great pestilence attacked the Indians of that island in 1763 and 1765, and that of 358, the whole number, 222 died. In that year, he says, the bluefish disappeared, and I have no knowledge of a specimen being seen here for more than 70 years. We are informed that they are found in other localities. They are said to occur on the western coast of Africa, around the island of Madagascar, and also at Australia. If so, they are found over a wider geographical range than any other species with which I am acquainted, inhabiting the waters in both the torrid and temperate zones. After an absence of so many years they returned, as appeared in evidence before the com mittee, about 1832, along the shores south of Cape Cod. They did not come north of the cape so as to affect our fisheries until 1847, when they appeared in vast abundance and drove away from our bay nearly all other species. I was at that time engaged in fishing for mackerel with nets. This was the last of our catch; and every year since, when our fishermen are engaged in this fishery, they appear. I have known them to appear as early as the second day of June, but usually they do not come until a few days later-from the 5th to the 15th. When they first appeared in our bay I was living at Long Point, Provincetown, in a little village containing some 270 population, engaged in the net fishery. The bluefish affected our fishery so much that the people were obliged to leave the place. Family after family moved away, until every one left, leaving that locality, which is now a desolate, barren, and sandy waste.

I suppose you still indorse this ?-A. That is what I said, and I indorse it word for word.

Q. That exists to the present day?-A. To some extent. The bluefish are not so plenty of late as in former years.

Q. Well, the bluefish is a fish that preys not merely upon the squid and other fish used for bait, but upon the mackerel also?-A. Yes; the mackerel, menhaden, and others.

Q. Talking of menhaden, that is carried on at a very considerable distance from shore at your place?—A. Yes.

Q. How far off?-A. I don't know. They say it is carried on wide off shore, but how far that means I don't know. I should think six, eight, or ten miles they might go. But this is guess-work.

Q. Menhaden is an inshore fishery, is it not?-A. They don't come on shore, as a general thing. They used to come into Provincetown and stay all summer before the bluefish appeared. Now they drive them off, and we only have them when they are passing in and out.

Q. Then, so far as menhaden is a valuable fishery, it is really a highsea fishery at present?-A. Well, they have gone up into the mouth of the rivers-they have always been in the habit of doing that-going up where the sea-water is impregnated with fresh water, to some extent. This year they have gone into the Merrimac, at Newburyport. They have gone up the river, and a Newburyport man asked me yesterday what was the cause of so many dying there. It became a perfect nuisance at Salisbury Point, which is opposite Newburyport. Vessels after vessels have been there to get bait-Cape Ann vessels. The fish have died and drifted off along to Salisbury Point.

Q. That is something very unusual?-A. My impression is that they were driven up by the bluefish. I asked him what there was following them. He said there were bluefish off the coast. Besides that there is

a horse-mackerel, which is a great enemy of the menhaden. They kept the menhaden in, and the fresh water killed them.

Q. Your own opinion was that this was an extraordinary incursion of menhaden in consequence of their being pressed by the bluefish ?—A. I say they were kept up by the bluefish and horse-mackerel, and so they have been kept up in other places in the same way. I think the reason they died was because the water was fresh.

Q. All I want to know is, whether the menhaden has not become a deep-sea fishery apparently, and whether the fish are not driven away from their proper haunt by the bluefish into waters where they cannot live?-A. It has been the case this summer.

Q. Otherwise you agree that this is a deep-sea fishery ?-A. That is, outside of three miles.

Q. And it has been so for some years?-A. They have been going farther off.

Q. Don't the fishermen allege that the purse-seine destroys the menhaden too?-A. It is just the same as the mackerel fishery. They use these purse-seines, and have steamers, and carry on the business to an enormous extent.

Q. It is used as well for oil as for bait?-A. Yes.

Q. Have you an oil-mill?—A. No; not of that kind. Mine is codliver-oil.

Q. All the fish I think have very much decreased along the coast of Massachusetts of late years?-A. I do not think the fish taken, on the whole, are so plentiful as they used to be. I think there has been a diminution within eight years in almost every kind.

Q. You delivered an address, didn't you, before the senate of the

Rhode Island legislature in the January session of 1872-A. Yes, I think so.

Q. You used this language, I think-I read from an "Abstract of an address by Capt. Nathaniel E. Atwood in opposition to legislation, before the senate committee of Rhode Island legislature, January session, 1872:"

We find upon examination that changes take place in a series of years in the great category of fishes for which we can assign no reason. In Massachusetts Bay and along the coast of our State the kinds of fish are not the same to-day that they were in the days of our boyhood. Those that were most abundant then have suffered great diminution and sometimes have totally disappeared perhaps never to return; while other varieties have perhaps after gradually diminishing more and more for a series of years, increased again and become as abundant as before. Other species have come among us that were utterly unknown in our youthful years.

Q. These statements you still indorse?—A. I think so. Yes. Changes are constantly taking place.

Q. When you fished in the Bay St. Lawrence for mackerel it was an inshore fishery, was it not?-A. The Bay St. Lawrence? Some fished inshore, I think. We fished within three miles at Magdalen Islandsthe greatest part of our fishing.

Q. You don't wish us to understand that Magdalen Islands is the only place where they came within three miles?-A. No.

Q. I suppose the habits that fish exhibit there they exhibit elsewhere as well?-A. I suppose so. I think the mackerel come inshore at Prince Edward Island and down the northern part of Cape Breton Island, and in the Strait of Canso-they pass through that in migrating off the coast-that is, part of them do.

Q. At Sydney is not that an inshore fishery too?-A. I suppose they come inshore there. The other side of Scatarie, at Louisburg, I have harbored there. They had some nets, the people that belonged there, and they caught some very fine mackerel in September.

Q. Did you ever pursue the mackerel fishing at any time in your life on the American coast in boats?-A. No, not to any great extent besides netting.

Q. Did you take them within three miles?-A. Yes, some, and some farther off. We have a bay from our town to Barnstable and Plymouth, twenty-one miles broad. If we are half way across we are ten miles off. Well, we fish very close to the shore there, and we drift anywhere and everywhere that we can catch mackerel.

Q. In those days it was an inshore fishery?-A. It was so far as that netting was concerned, and then around in Provincetown Harbor.

Q. Those that were taken with hook and line were taken within three miles in those days?-A. We used to catch some also outside, and most of our mackerel-fishing in vessels we caught outside of three miles.

*

Q. That is of late years ?—A. O! it used to be so too. Sometimes we would go very close inshore, or sometimes we would be half way off to Cape Ann; that is twenty-five miles, and we would fish away out to Mount Desert and Cashes Ledges. I have been for mackerel one summer in a small vessel, and we took where we could not see the land even on a clear day. I did see Mount Desert, that was very high, and you could see it a good way off.

Q. You are aware, of course, of the years over which the Reciprocity Treaty run?-A. I am pretty well aware of it; I know when it termi nated, and I think it lasted eleven years; it terminated in 1866. I was sent as a delegate to Washington when it was abrogated.

Q. To get it renewed again?-A. No; I went there because we were a fishing place, and they thought it their duty to send a delegate there.

Q. Did the fishermen consider the Reciprocity Treaty a benefit at all-A. Well, I do not know but they did at that time. Different views are entertained of these things.

Q. What did they say about it in Boston ?-A. I do not know. We didn't participate very much in the bay fishery. All that we had under the treaty was the right to fish inshore, and then we had our markets opened to the fish from the British Provinces. We thought that the fish coming in there seemed to affect us so much that the Provincetown people thought the better thing would be to have the duty on.

Q. Is that what you went as a delegate for?-A. I do not know how many words I will have before I come to that.

Q. Didn't you go down to use your influence to get it continued?—A. No, sir. What we went down for, now that you come to that question, I will answer that. We, as fishermen in Provincetown, were more extensively engaged in the cod fishery, and had but little to do with any three-mile line, for we had no vessels of any consequence going in the bay, and we were in favor of having just as high a tariff on codfish as we could possibly get. We learned that men had been and stated before the committee of Congress that if they could have a right to fish inshore in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence they would be willing for the codfish from the provinces to be imported free of duty. Well, we as a cod-fishing place certainly must feel it was for our interest to have a duty on them. Then they sent me to see if I could get any higher duty on codfish than we had under the Treaty of 1818.

Q. I understand you that these persons engaged in the mackerel fishery were still desirous of getting the right to fish in the bay within three miles of the land?-A. Yes.

Q. They were willing, if they could do so, that the codfish should go in free, but your people were engaged more in cod-fishing. Those were people that did not have any cod-fishing?-A. Yes.

Q. Then the mackerelers did want to go inside, and were willing, if they could do so, that the codfish from the British Provinces should come in free?-A. They asked me there about this thing before this committee-what I wanted. I said I did not go in for one set of fishermen to pay for the privileges accorded to another set.

Q. That seems to be reasonable.-A. Allow me one more word. I said to that committee that we take our towns-take Plymouth, with her 52 vessels engaged in the Bank fishery, she had not a single mackerel fisher; take Wellfleet with just about the same number of vessels, she was ready to rush into the gulf and fish within the three-mile limit and make Plymouth pay for it.

Q. From your standpoint, as a Provincetown man, you were not willing that the American mackerel-fishers should go in within the threemile limit at the expense of your cod-fishery?-A. We did not want to do so.

Q. That is the whole story. You wanted a high duty on codfish to keep the British fish out?-A. Yes.

Q. And the result was to the general consumers that they would have to pay more for their codfish? A. Yes, sir, more for their codfish. We are apt to be-fishermen are-swayed by selfish motives.

Q. Well, you hadn't any favorable eye on the consumers?-A. Well, we are not apt to. I don't know of anybody but wants to sell what he has for the most he can get.

Q. Were there no mackerel-fishers out of Provincetown running into the bay.-A. There might be one or two.

Q. They were in a great minority, as regards the cod-fishers, at the