APPENDIX Q. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. NOTE. Since sending the manuscript of this report to press, several valuable contributions to the knowledge of the menhaden and the menhaden industry have been received. In order to bring the discus sion of the subject up to date these have been included in an appendix, with references prefixed, which show their proper connection in the body of the report. GLOUCESTER, MASS., September 22, 1878 1. An early allusion to the fat back on the Southern coast. (Paragraph 28, p. 14.) Catesby, in his Natural History of the Carolinas, Florida, and the Bahamas, 1731–1742, Vol. II, p. xxxiii, makes the following allusions to the "fat-back" or menhaden: แ Herrings in March leave the salt Waters and run up the Rivers and shallow Streams of fresh Water in such prodigious Sholes that people cast them on Shore with Shovels. A Horse passing these waters unavoidably tramples them under his Feet; their Plenty is of great Benefit to the inhabitauts of many Parts of Virginia and Carolina. But the most extraordinary Inundation of Fish happens annually a little within the northern Cape of Chesapick Bay in Virginia, where there are cast on Shore usually in March, such incredible Numbers of Fish, that the Shore is covered with them a considerable Depth, and three Miles in length along the Shore. At these Times the Inhabitants from far within Land come down with their Carts and carry away what they want of the Fish; there remaining to rot on the Shore many Times more than sufficed them: From the Putrefaction that this causes the place has attained the Name of Maggoty Bay. "These Fish are of various Kinds and Sizes, and are drove on Shore by the Pursuit of Porperses and other voracious Fish, at the general Time of Spawning; amongst the Fish that are thus drove on Shore is a small fish called a Fat-back; it is thick and round, resembling a Mullet but Smaller. It is an excellent Sweet Fish, and so excessive fat that Butter is never used in frying, or any other Preparation of them. At certain Seasons and Places there are infinite Numbers of these Fish caught, and are much esteemed by the Inhabitants for their Delicacy" 2. Departure of the schools in the fall. (Section 12, p. 38.) Mr. Charles G. Atkins, in a letter to Professor Baird, March 9, 1878 (Bucksport, Me.), states that young menhaden were more abundant than ever in the fall of 1877. Sometimes at a single tide each net-fisherman would catch at his "berth" thirty or forty individuals. They continued to take them until January. Mr. H. L. Dudley, of Piue Island, states that the season in Eastern Long Island Sound has usually opened May 1 to May 10, and closed about November 15. In 1877 some fish were caught after December 1, and in 1878 his steamer caught 125,000, April 15, the earliest catch ever known. 3. The spawning-grounds of the menhaden. (Paragraph 133, p. 99.) Evidence now tends to show that some of the schools, at least, defer spawning until the season of their approach to the coast in April. Like the mackerel, they seem to come into the shoal water along the shores of the Middle States and Southern New England laden with ripe ova, which they may deposit either on the sandy bottoms at a distance from land or in the entrance to the broad bays. With this new light I am prepared to believe that certain schools spawn in the rivers and sounds of the Southern States from Florida to North Carolina, as is confidently stated by several of our correspondents; indeed, I have had several strong testimonies from persons in Florida since writing paragraph 133. Although the facts are not sufficient to determine whether menhaden spawn on a falling temperature, like the herring, or on a rising temperature, like the shad, the latter view appears to be gaining in weight. Capt. Robert H. Hurlbert, of Gloucester, a close observer, whose statements about the mackerel and cod I have often had occasion to test and never found inaccurate, assures me that in 1875, when with the mackerel fleet on the southern coast, he saw a number of menhaden, full of spawn, taken in the seine with a school of mackerel, twelve miles south of the Five-Fathom Bank light-ship, off Delaware Bay. This was late in April. In late April, 1877, again, he seined ten barrels of fat, large fish off Chincoteague Shoals, on the eastern shore of Virginia. Their abdo mens were much extended, and all which were examined proved to be full of spawn. Captain Hurlbert has caught them and examined numbers of them later in the season after fishing began in Block Island Sound, but has never seen spawn in them. Capt. Henry E. Webb, of Milk Island, Rockport, Mass., states that twenty years ago he was in the habit of catching menhaden in the neighborhood of Cape Ann. He caught a few large ones every year before the great schools came in. These he cut up for bait, and occasionally found them full of spawn. He has never seen spawn in them after the middle of May. When a boy, as early as 1848, he lived at Riverhead, N. Y., near the eastern entrance of Long Island Sound. He says that he was accustomed to catch multitudes of young menhaden in a musquito net seine toward the end of summer. These little fish when they first came into the creeks were transparent and about half an inch long, but increased rapidly in size toward the end of the season,, and in the fall measured four or five inches. The parallelism between these facts and those connected with the spawning of the mackerel is very apparent. I regret that I must send this paper to press with the question of the spawning habits of the menhaden in such an unsatisfactory condition. 4. Menhaden fishing on a Long Island steamer. [From advance sheets of an article entitled "Around the Peconics," by ERNEST INGERSOLL, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for October 1, 1878, pp. 719–723. ] (Paragraph 174, p. 124.) Loitering in comfortable indecision, I was fortunate enough to get an invitation from Captain "Jed" Hawkins to take a fishing cruise in his "bunker" steamer. The start was to be made at earliest dawn-an ungracious hour-and I was glad to leave the hotel in the evening, and avail myself of a sofa in the captain's snug state-room behind the pilothouse, so as to avoid the annoyance of getting up in the middle of the night. It was Sunday, and the little wharf was utterly deserted as I picked my way among the rubbish and piles of merchandise down to the steamer. Standing on the high deck, a picture of serene beauty spread before me. The air was perfectly still, the moon just fairly risen, and no sound was to be heard save the ticking of that mighty time-piece the tide, as its wavelets swung gently back and forth under the weedy piers or divided against the sharp prows of the smacks. It was light enough to show the spars and ropes of every craft, and all lay as motionless as though fixed in rock rather than floating in liquid, save the tremulous blue pennons on the topmasts. Then I turned in; and when I emerged, after an hour's pounding on my door (as it seemed) by the chuggety-chugging engines, we were far down Gardiner's Bay. Last night the unruffled water was like bronze; now, under the soft silvery haze of the morning, the dancing surface became frosted silver, opaque and white save where the early sunbeams, striking through the mist, were reflected from the crests of the ripples in glancing ribbons of light. Shelter Island was an indistinguishable mass far astern; Long Beach light had ceased to twinkle; Orient Point was hidden in haze; Plumb Island, where eagles used to make their metropolis, and many fish-hawks now live, nesting on the ground with the gulls, was only a low bank of blue; Gull Islands could not be seen at all; and I only knew that Little Gull with its copper-bolted wall was there from the dot in the horizon made by its louely light-house, and an occasional gleam imagined to be the surf breaking on the reefs at the Race. All this was northward. Southward the wooded bluffs of Gardiner's Island, with its natural breakwater and light-house, like a long arm reaching out between the outer and the inner waters, limiting the view. But this was soon left behind, and as the deep indentation of Napeague |