The American Fisheries [pp. 470-481]

THE AMERICAN FISHERIES. 479
and New Hampshire 1,096 barrels, of which the total exports. were
22,551 barrels, valued at $83,759. This branch of the fishery is
subject to great fluctuations, and we consequently find the product
of the mackerel fishery in Massachusetts in 1860 only reached
111,375 barrels, chiefly produced in Essex and Barnstable counties.
The returns for Maine in that year footed up 23,653 barrels. Bristol County, Rhode Island, returned 15,000 barrels of mackerel.
TiiE SALMON FISHERY.-The waters of North America contain a
greater number of species of the trout family (Salmonides) than
those of any other country. They are all esteemed for their delicacy
of flesh, and are found in nearly all of our northern rivers and lakes.
The larmrest and most valuable of the several genera is the common
or true salmon, (S(tlmzo salur.) This beautiful fish, which is the delight of the angler, lives ten or twelve years, and in Europe often
attains great size-the largest specimen on record having weighed
83 pounds. The largest salmon taken in our rivers have not exceedled 70 pounds-the average weight being considerably less, or
from 12 to 20 pounds. A British author has ranked the salmon
fishery next to agriculture as a source of food-an estimate less applicable to our country than to Scotland, the rivers of which alone
have been computed to furnish salmon to the annual value of
$750,000. This fish never enters the MelIiterranean, but is found
on the coast of Europe, from the Bay of Biscay to Spitzbergen.
The salmon is taken in most of the rivers and estuaries of North
America, from Greenland to the Kennebec, in Maine, on the eastern
coast, and fromn the Columbia river northward, on the Pacific seaboard. It is found in all the tributaries of Lake Ontario, its further
progress being arrested by the Falls of Niagara. It is very abundant in the Restigouchle and the numerous other streams falling into
the Bay de Chaleur, in the Saguenay, and all the rivers on the north
of the St. Lawrence eastward to Labrador, and in the St. John's
river and its tributaries below the grand falls. The St. John's furnishes nearly one-half of all the salmon brought to our markets, and
its principal branch-the Aroostook-is the richest salmon fishery
on the Atlantic coast. About 40,000 salmon were caught in the
harbor of St. John in 1850, and shipped fresh in ice to Boston.
From the British provinces the imports of pickled salmon in the
same year were 8,287 barrels, valued at $78,989, in addition to considerable quantities of smoked salmon. The co,ld and limpid waters
of many of the streams of British America, and the absence on mnost
of then of dams, mills, steamboats, and other improvements, invite
the presence of the salmon, which is a timid fish, and quickly forsakes its accustomed haunts when disturbed. For this reason these
fish have now nearly forsaken the Merrimack, the Cumberland, the
Thames, the Hudson, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and other
Atlantic rivers of the United States in which they were formerly
found and taken in considerable numbers. Few are now caught
south of the Kennebec. In 1818, 2,381 barrels of salmon were in