Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/841

Rh will, their ultimate establishment in the river system of Asia maybe regarded as assured. Owing to various favorable conditions, the shad not only multiplies rapidly in its new abode, but in some localities has modified its habits, being found in varying abundance throughout the year. Moreover, it attains an exceptional size; seven and eight pound fish are common in California, but are almost unknown with us, and there have been exposed for sale in the San Francisco market shad of a weight as high as twelve and thirteen pounds. This superiority in size is not unlikely due mainly to a less actively prosecuted fishery, for shad of equal weight were known to our fathers. The heaviest fish are probably the growth of a number of years, and an exhaustive fishery that each season leaves but few survivors necessarily tends to eliminate the larger individuals.

Upon the Atlantic coast the utmost effort of the Fish Commissioners, supported by ample State and national expenditure, seems powerless to effect a renewal of the abundance of old. No more saddening exhibitions of man's improvidence are afforded than by the noble rivers that have been depleted or exhausted of their finny treasures, and of such perhaps the most striking are those presented by the larger affluents of Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac and the Susquehanna. Sixty years ago, through the greater course of these long streams, both the shad and the alewife, or fresh-water herring, existed in almost incredible numbers. In the Potomac the two species would often ascend the river together, and it was not an uncommon draught to secure several hundred thousand herring and several thousand shad at a single haul. The fishermen, in drawing the seine on shore, would pile the herring knee-deep for twelve or fifteen feet landward, and then walk or wade through the mass, thrusting in their arms and picking out the shad. The herring so stacked would be sometimes sold for a mere trifle, sometimes be given away; often, although an edible fish, and perhaps superior in that respect to the common herring, would be carted off for manure; and sometimes, for lack of even that demand, would be allowed to float away upon the rising tide. In 1832 nine hundred and fifty thousand, accurately counted, were taken out at one draught; the number of shad seined was often four thousand and upward, and the selling price as low as a dollar and a half per hundred fish. Of such destructive fishing a constant decline in the annual catch was the inevitable result, and thus it happened that for some years prior to the war practical exhaustion had been attained. The abatement of the fishery during that period so far restocked the river that it was renewed with profit upon the restoration of peace, but improvidence again resulted in impoverishment. In the early seventies government aid was invoked and extended; many millions of shad fry were