o the shad, as the remora of
Imperatus is said to do to the shark of Tiburon. They continue
their stay there about three months. The shad at their first coming
up are fat and fleshy, but they waste so extremely in milting and
spawning that at their going down they are poor and seem fuller of
bones, only because they have less flesh. As these are in the
freshes, so the salts afford at certain times of the year many
other kinds of fish in infinite shoals, such as the oldwife, a fish
not much unlike a herring, and the sheepshead, a sort of fish which
they esteem in the number of their best.

There is likewise great plenty of other fish all the summer long
and almost in every part of the rivers and brooks there are found
of different kinds. Wherefore I shall not pretend to give a detail
of them, but venture to mention the names only of such as I have
eaten and seen myself and so leave the rest to those that are
better skilled in natural history. However, I may add that besides
all those that I have met with myself, I have heard of a great many
very good sorts, both in the salts and freshes, and such people
too, as have not always spent their time in that country, have
commended them to me, beyond any they had ever eaten before.

Those which I know myself, I remember by the names of herring,
rock, sturgeon, shad, oldwife, sheepshead, black and red drums,
trout, taylor, greenfish, sunfish, bass, chub, plaice, flounder,
whiting, fatback, maid, wife, small turtle, crab, oyster, mussel,
cockle, shrimp, needlefish, bream, carp, pike, jack, mullet, eel,
conger eel, perch, and catfish.

Those which I remember to have seen there of the kinds that are not
eaten are the whale, porpoise, shark, dogfish, gar, stingray,
thornback, sawfish, toadfish, frogfish, land crabs, fiddlers, and
periwinkle.

Francis Makemie, often called the father of American Presbyterianism,
was concerned, in his _A Plain and Friendly Perswasive to the
Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland for Promoting Towns and
Cohabitations_, about the dearth of markets for fishery products. It
was a condition brought about largely by a general lack of money in
circulation. It was easily possible for entire families to subsist the
year around on the fruits of land and water plus unexacting manual
labor. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the more importan