Morning journal and courier., 1892-12-16
HARVEST OF THE SEA.


 The Vast Importance of the Fisheries |
 Along Our New England Coast.
 The importance of our coast fisheries and the vast amount of fertilizing material for our New England farms derived therefrom are well set forth in valuable paper read recently before the Massachusetts board of agriculture at Spencer by MT. W. H. Bow ker, portion of whose paper is given, as follows:
 In 1888 the value of the fish taken from the seq for food, oil and fertilizers was $11 ,000, 900 in New England and $34, ,0OO,- 900 for the whole country. In 1889, 300 tons or the equivalent of 1000 oxen was daily taken to the London market. The use of fish as an article of plant
 food is of principal interest to farmers, tory records that the inhabitants 'doung l their grounds" with the "fsh that at the
 spring of the yeare passs up the rivers" "You may see in one township one hun dred acres together set with these fish,
 every acre taking ,000 of them and an acre thus dressed will produce and yeaid as much corne as three acres without fish,"
 The history of the Plymouth plantation al- ludes to the use of fish as fertilizer for corn at various times. In 1644 the town | of Ipswich ordered "that all doggs for the space of three weeks after the publishing hereof shall have one legg tyed up. If 8 man refuses to tye up his dogg's legg l and he is found scraping up fish in the cornfelds, the owner thereof shall pay
 twelve pence damage besides whatever
 damage the dogg does."
 Passing to the present, we find that men | haden and other kinds of fish are caught in greater or less quantity for the en- ! richment of the soil. We have learned in
 later times, that these fish are a source of plant food because they contain nitrogen and phosphoric acid, two important ele- ments in the building up of plants. This
 nitrogen is termed organic because at one
 time it was part of a living organism. It | is no better than is found in many other or
 ganic substances, especially dried blood | and obtained from hundreds of slaughter
 houses throughout the country. Nitrogen
 obtained from fish is probably not equal,
 as an active agent, to many of the chemi-
 cal salts, such as sulphats of ammonia
 and nitrate of soda, but nevertheless it is l most valuable source of fertility.
 Though we use the refuse from the large
 fisheries upon the Atlantic coast, such as
 fish skins, fish heads and fish offal which
 is dried and prepared for agricultural
 uses, yet the great source of plant food in
 the sea is the menhaden fish, the most
 abundant species which swims along our
 shores, the scavenger of the sea. and a
 means of restoring, in some measure, the
 fertility that is pouring into the sea
 through the sewers of every seaboard city.
 vegetable matter which is pouring into the
 sea practically increases the infusorial life l upon which the smaller fish feed, and thus , enables each estuary to support greater !: numbers of fish. If the menhaden spawns
 in deep or warmer waters, and then in the spring of the year migrates to our shores to feed upon the deposits of sewage ol l lower orders of life produced by sewage, ii
 would seem almost imperative to allow l these fish to be caught as one of ths meani F of building up our agriculture. } Menhaden pomace, after the oil and mos : of the moisture is pressed out and it hal
 been sun dried like hay, contains from I to 10 per cent. of nitrogen, and from to - per cent. of phosphoric acid; that is, to1
 of menhaden fish contains 300 pounds O l ! actual plant food, worth in the market to r day from $35 to $40.
 The entire catch of the eighteen year : amounts to ovsr 100000 tons, whicl : yielded 134 900 tons of nitrogen and phos . phoric acid, worth in round numbers $50, Q 1000 for msnurisl purposes alone, ant 0 furnishing sufficient plant food except witt @ potash, phosphoric acid to spare. t For either one of the following: - 7oo,ooo,o o0o bushels potatoes,
 U 1O3,00O,OOO |" wheat,
 l. 5,000,000 tons hay.
 ;, Supposing that the entire nitrogen an 'i phosphoric acid required for the followin !. II named crops is drawn entirely from thi source, we find that the catch of menhade . and the waste from other fish for the pas U eighteen years would be sufficient to ma
 nure 3, 200, ,OO0 acres of corn of 50 bushel ,: each, or 7,000, 900 acres of potatoes of 10 u bushels each.
 s Is not every state in the Union intereste in this harvest?
 :, Mr. Bowker then referred to the stead falling off, each year since 1884, of tn
 catch of msnhaden, owing largely to inju 2 dicious legislation in the supposed interes u of the bluefsh which feeds upon them s . but reall;5 in ths interest only of fey sportsmen. He strongly combatted tn
 idea that modern improvements in fshin
 threatened the destruction of the menha g den.
 According to Colonel Mcdonald, ou e present fish commissioner, the menhaden z although nos much larger than the herring Il is said to have five times as many eggi ', "The herring has about 55, 900, and a mer ~ haden taken in Narragansett bay Noven B Der 1, 1879, contained at least 150,0 ,4 eggs," and it is stated that cod has bee g caught which contained 9,O0O,OO0 eggs 20 The English fish inspectors for 1878 est l7 mated that the increase in herring for on n,o season is sufficient, if none is destroyed, t make 8 solid wall around the earth 200 fee 'r broad and 100 feet high
 To conFare the extinction of fish wit Il the extinction of the buffalo is like con T. pairing the sun to the tallow candle. Whe1
 l there is one buffalo or one deer born an 'e which can be located, there are million upon millions of fish matched each yes
 which inhabit the unfathomable water
 comprising three-fourthso of the globe. I'll n sslectmen of Buzzard's Bay might as we 's think of pumping the ocean dry as to @
 haust it of it's fish.
 el Our coast waters belong to the who y country and hence there should be but or T. supreme law. The whole country is taxe :. to improve and defend them; therefore tt '' wheat farmer of Ohio, the cotton plante 'e of Tennessee, the potato grower of Mair v- and the market gardener of Massachusetts, I. has as much right to ask that the nitroge a and phosphoric acid, which can be hal ,e vested out of the ssa in the form of mel a, haden or other fish, should bs taken ft the benefit of his exhausted farm, as ths Y the sportsman should be protected in h if right to fish off his piazza on Buzzard "a Bay, or the shore fisherman to take fe " mackerel in the old fashioned way for h {. support.
 New methods of fishing are as in % portant as new methods in any other il ye dustry and should be protected W B. might as we'll propose that the steam an 1t electric railways should be abolished i B. the interest of the horse breeders, and ths y the moving machine should be discarde m in the interest of the farm laborer; whi d. the hand shoemaker may claim that u l. modern shoe shop is interfering with h 1- livelihood and therefore should be abo nt ished. We are moving ahead and any ne in method which will enable us to reap
 greater benefit for the good of mankin as should be encouraged, whether it relat n to the shop, the factory, the sea or tl t, land.
 $. If there had been the usual quantity 8. food fish, especially mackerel and all ot menhaden, taken from the sea this yea Id except for the prohibitory legislation, ;, might have had material influence upc
 the price of meat products, and it certainl
 would have had very. great infuen' ,e l upon the price of fish scrap to the tobact
 grower in the Connecticut valley and g, Virginia, who this year will have to pc Tt from $5 to $7 more ton than he did l It. 1891.
 i'd The great catch of menhaden fish, 1S'
 L1 0e ,l,s &l.