"Fish is exceedingly cheap. They sell a fine cod, will weigh a dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea for about twopence sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as cheap as sprats in London. Salmon, too, they have in great plenty, and these they sell for about a shilling apiece which will weigh fourteen or fifteen pounds." Two kinds of delicious fish, beloved, perhaps, above all others to-day,--salmon and shad,--seem to have been lightly regarded in colonial days. The price of salmon--less than a penny a pound--shows the low estimation in which it was held in the early years of the eighteenth century. It is told that farm-laborers in the vicinity of the Connecticut River when engaged to work stipulated that they should have salmon for dinner but once a week. Shad were profoundly despised; it was even held to be somewhat disreputable to eat them; and the story is told of a family in Hadley, Massachusetts, who were about to dine on shad, that, hearing a knock at the door, they would not open it till the platter holding the obnoxious shad had been hidden. At first they were fed chiefly to hogs. Two shad for a penny was the ignoble price in 1733, and it was never much higher until after the Revolution. After shad and salmon acquired a better reputation as food, the falls of various rivers became great resorts for American fishermen as they had been for the Indians. Both kinds of fish were caught in scoop-nets and seines below the falls. Men came from a distance and loaded horses and carts with the fish to carry home. Every farmhouse near was filled with visitors. It was estimated that at the falls at South Hadley there were fifteen hundred horses in one day. Salted fish was as carefully prepared and amiably regarded for home use in New England and New York as in England and Holland at the same date. The ling and herring of the old countries of Europe gave place in America to cod, shad, and mackerel. The greatest pains was taken in preparing, drying, and salting the plentiful fish. It is said that in New York towns, such as New York and Brooklyn, after shad became a popular fish, great heaps were left when purchased at each door, and that the necessary cleaning and preparation of the shad was done on the street. As all housewives purchased shad and salted and packed at about the same time, those public scavengers, the domestic hogs who roamed the town streets unchecked (and ever welcomed), must have been specially useful at shad-time.