brook-trout worth $6,500, sea-trout worth $22,058, and mackerel worth $16,400. No mackerel were canned in 1889 but in 1898 the pack of canned mackerel was valued at $44,848. The output of canned clams in the same time increased from $43,050 in 1889 to $206,087 in 1898.

By 1902 packers began to can kippered herring, the output for that year being 1,750 cases, valued at $8,720. Mackerel, lobsters, menhaden, and cod have not been canned to any extent for the last half dozen years, the canning business being confined largely to sardines and the different products of clam, as canned clams, clam juice, clam chowder, and clam extracts.

In 1905, the canning industry of Maine was worth, in manufactured and secondary products, $5,342,062. This total was made up of the following products: sardines, in oil, mustard, and spices, $5,078,587; plain herring $7,200; mackerel, $340; cod, $8,931; Russian sardines, $1,750; herring, salted and smoked, $34,285; clam products, $192,479. Secondary products, oil, pomace, scrap and fertilizer, $18,490. The number of persons engaged in the canning industry of Maine in 1905 was 7,017 and the wages paid $1,160,434.2

THE SHAD.

There is no food-fish on the Atlantic coast that can compare with the shad in its importance to so many persons. Other fishery industries are carried on with greater capital invested, at a greater risk of life and property, with more effort, and with greater returns. But the shad fishery is probably the most universal of the Atlantic coast fisheries. The fish occurs more or less abundantly along the whole coast from Florida to New Brunswick. Like the alewife,

1 Goode, Sec. V, Vol. I, p. 521.

2 Fisheries of the New England States for 1902 and 1905.

the shad is anadromous-ascending rivers for the purpose of spawning-when it may be taken by the farmer-fisherman at his very door, hundreds of miles from the coast.

Within the last half century, the abundance of shad in our rivers has been greatly affected by the agency of man, especially in the rivers where dams have been constructed and on which certain mills have been built. In the early part of the last century shad used to enter and ascend the rivers until they met with impassable falls or reached the head waters of the stream. They were taken at all points along the run. The most important agencies that have brought about a limitation of the range of shad in rivers are insurmountable dams, the pollution of water by manufacturing plants and the sewage of cities, agricultural operations that, carried on near the rivers, cause the waters to become muddy during the spawning seasons, and the extensive fisheries usually placed at the mouths of rivers. In a few rivers the development of the water power has resulted in completely exterminating the anadromous fishes, this being the case in the Thames, the Blackstone, the Saco, and the Merrimac. In the case of the Connecticut, the abundance of the shad has decreased greatly since the building of the dam at Holyoke in 1849. The fish were thus prevented from ascending the river above the dam and for several years were caught in greater abundance at points below the obstruction. But from the six years from 1865 to 1870 the annual catch averaged 4,482 shad, less than one-half the former yield. The record of the catch on the Connecticut from 1853 to 1896 shows that the total yield below the dam decreased from nearly 500,000 annually to an average of less than one-tenth of that number.1

1 The Shad Fisheries of the Atlantic Coast, pp. 112-113.

How the range of shad in New England rivers has been cut down is apparent from the following tables, exhibiting the original and

The shad appear on the New England coast from about the first of April to the first of May. They immediately ascend the streams for the purpose of spawning. After remaining in the rivers for several months they disappear, in their annual migration to southern waters, for the winter. The fish is of value not only on account of its availability of capture and its commercial worth to mankind but indirectly because the large schools of young shad, when leaving their native streams, attract to the coast the deepsea fish, as the cod, haddock, and other offshore species. Thus the larger kinds of fish may often be taken without the expense and risk of trips to the distant banks.

The shad fishery of the United States centers principally in New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland. The industry in New England is inferior when compared with the fishery that is carried on in the other Atlantic states. The number of shad taken in the country in 1896 was above 13,000,000, valued at $1,651,443. The catch of the New England states was 490,000 fish, valued at $51,696. The value of the catch for 1898 was $44,018, and for 1902, $58,564. The rivers of Maine and Connecticut furnish the larger part of the New England catch of shad. The the present range of the fish. The present range of shad in these five rivers is less than 40% of the original range.

Original limit of shad run. Present limit of shad run.

catch and value of the shad fishery of Maine within recent years has been as follows:-1896, catch 366,738 fish, valued at $30,788; 1898, catch, 861,879 fish, valued at $19,752; 1902, 848,999 fish, valued at $28,959; 1905, 1,087,200 fish, valued at $54,286; 1906, 470,200 fish, valued at $7,716. The number of persons employed in 1905 was 285; in 1906, there were 350.

For thirty years or more the people of Connecticut have been endeavoring to keep alive the shad fishery of the Connecticut River. Of all rivers of New England this one, perhaps, has suffered the most from the destruction of its fish. The salmon began to fall off in numbers as soon as dams were erected. They disappeared entirely from the river more than a hundred years ago. The movement of restocking the Connecticut with salmon and shad had its beginning in a meeting of commissioners from New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut held at Boston on February 27, 1867. An agreement was entered into at this meeting whereby "New Hampshire was to procure and distribute impregnated ova of salmon and shad in the head waters of the river. Vermont and Massachusetts were to build suitable fishways for the passage of fish over the dams to their spawning grounds; and Connecticut was to abolish gill-nets, stake nets, and pounds in the river and on the sound."1

Connecticut immediately restricted the shad fishing to the period from March 15 to June 15. New Hampshire planted 20,000 salmon fry in the head waters of the Connecticut that year. Seth Green began the artificial propagation of shad at Holyoke. His attempts were not successful at first but the next year he succeeded in hatching several million of shad. In 1869 no attempts were made to hatch shad.

1 Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries and Game, State of Connecticut for 1906, p. 8.

In 1870 shad appeared in unusual abundance, there being more than for twenty years past. The fishing continued uncommonly good throughout the season. Fiftyfour million shad fry were hatched and turned into the river at Holyoke that season. The next year, also, shad were in abundance, and 65,000,000 shad fry were turned into the river at Holyoke, and in 1872 nearly 90,000,000

more.

In 1874 the United States Commissioner co-operated in hatching 44,000,000 shad fry. The four states in co-operation planted over one million salmon fry. The following year 460,000 salmon fry were planted. From 1867 to 1874 the operations of Seth Green were conducted jointly by Massachusetts and Connecticut.

From 1875 to 1884 only 12,000,000 shad fry were planted in the river by Connecticut. The artificial propagation of shad on the Housatonic, at Birmingham, was begun in 1884, and the place was operated until 1898, hatching out over 75,000,000 shad fry during that period. About that time the run of shad ceased on the Housatonic and the artificial propagation of shad fry was discontinued on the part of the State until 1904. In the meantime the whole supply was obtained from the United States Government. The Connecticut Commission established a hatchery on the Farmington River in 1904, which has been conducted with satisfactory results. It has been the belief of the Fish Commision of the State for years that unless natural reproduction be aided by artificial propagation it is a matter of a few years only before the shad will be exterminated.1

THE ALEWIFE.

Alewives, or river herring, are the most abundant river food-fish frequenting the rivers of the Atlantic coast of 1 Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries and Game, Conn., 1906.