The American Fisheries [pp. 470-481]

477
THE AMERICAN FISHERIES.
Large numbers of shad and manure fish are taken ill the harbors
and rivers of Long Island sound, by the fishermen of Connecticut,
and in the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers. In 1850, Connecticut
returned 243,448 as the number of shad, exclusive of white fish used
as fertilizers caught in the State. North Carolina returned the same
year 56,482 barrels of shad and herring.
The total value of shad fishery of the United States in 1860 was
$433,671. Of this amount North Carolina produced upwards of
one-fourtl, or $117,259; Florida, $68,952; New Hampshire,
$64,500; New Jersey, $38,755; and Virginia, $68,210. The
average value returned in many places was about $12 per barrel,
and $7 per hundred for fresh shad.
Of the alosa menhaden, an inferior species, known by the several
local or popular names of mossbunker, pauhagen, hardhead, white
fish, and bony fish, large numbers are caught for mackerel bait, and
still larger quantities for manure. In former years they have been
sold as bait to Massachusetts fishermen at $2 to $4 per barrel.
Many of themI are also packed and sold as food. For that purpose
1,448 barrels were inspected in Massachusetts in 1836. As fertilizers these fish have been caught and hauled upon the land in the
neighborhood of Cape Cod for upwvards of twenty years. A single
fish of medium size has been considered equal, as a fertilizer, to a
shovel-full of barn-yard manure. Their use for this purpose is now
very extensive on the seaboard, especially in Connecticut, along the
sound. In 1850, Connecticut returned nearly 37,000,000 of white
fish, caught chiefly for that purpose, and Rhode Island reported
187,000 barrels of-menhaden taken. In 1860, Middlesex, New
Haven, and New London Counties, Connecticut, together returned
about 27,000,000 of white and manure fish taken, valued at $288,589,
in addition to fish converted into $31,500 worth of oil and fertilizers
in New London county. At the average reported value of one dollar per thousand, these would make an aggregate of about 60,000,000
of mossbunkers taken in the State in the year, but the actual value
is nearly $2 per thousand. Vast numbers of these are taken at Sag
Harbor and the shores of Long Island. In 1849 an attempt was
made at New Haven, by Mr. Lewis, to manufacture a portable
manure from the whitefish, and a quantity of the fertilizer, containing, according to the analysis of Professor Norton, of Yale College,
an equivalent of 12.42 per cent. of amnmonia, was put into the market. For some reason the enterprise was abandoned. In 1851 or
1852 a second effort was made by a Frenchman, named De Molen,
who had, in 1856, an establishment near the Straits of Bellisle, employing 150 men in manufacturing ta?grumr, or fish manure, from
herrings or herring refuse, large quantities of which were shipped to
France. Pettit & Green, in England, also engaged in the manufacture of fish manure, by a patent process, involving the use of sulphuric acid. By the more simple process of De Molen, and we
believe of Lewis, the fish were boiled or steamed into a pasty mass,
from which oil was then expressed and economized, and the cake or