Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1886 — Fish by the Square Mile. [ARTICLE]

Fish by the Square Mile.

Some faint idea of the vast and inexhaustible number of fish on our shores may, perhaps, be obtained by a consideration of the fact that yesterday no fewer than 6,000 barrels of porgies were caught off Newport. If the sea, through the Vineyard and Long Island Sound is anywhere near as rich in porgies, mossbunkers, and other varieties of the most abundant kinds of fish, what an unimaginably teeming world of life there must beneath the waves! And it is, even more than the striving, pushing world of human life, a scene of rapacity and destruction—the stronger preying upon the weaker and “the survival of the fittest.” Enormous as this single day's catch of porgies seems, it is surpassed by some of the big hauls of bony-fish or mossbunkers—the “wliiteffsh” of the evil-smelling fish oil mills on the shore. These creatures actually swarm in millions and are caught and hauled in by the cargo. Schools of voracious bluefish pursue and drive them flipping and flashing to the surface, where they are promptly pounced upon by the sailing fish hawks and sea-gulls that wait for them out of water. In the sea and on the land the world seems to be a scene of shark and tiger, in one or another form of destructive rapacity.— Hartjord Times. Little is known of the effect of solar eclipses on our atmosphere. To add to our knowledge, Norwegian seamen happening to be in favorable localities have been requested to make barometric and thermometric observations during the total eclipse of August 29 next