Finally the alewife is called “grayback,” a name that distinguishes it from a close relative often confused with it, which is called the “blackback,” “blueback,” or “glut herring” (_Pomolobus aestivalis_). The blueback shows up in a late spring run, and seems to spawn in the lower reaches of a stream, instead of migrating up to its headwaters. It has smaller eyes than the “grayback” and as its name indicates its back is dark blue, instead of greenish gray, but as colors fade at death, this is no sure test. The two species of alewife can only be told apart conclusively by dissection. The lining of the blueback’s body cavity is black instead of pink or gray. These names are also indicative of the range of the alewife, all the way from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Carolinas. In the spawning season they come inland by way of sandy inlets, great tidal bays, fresh-water river mouths, or creeks only a few yards wide. Most of the streams by which they are still able to swim up have their local history of fishing alewives, either with traps, weirs, dip nets, or even pails. In the fisheries of Maine it is known as “alewife dipping.” This is an important “food fish,” even though it may never have approached the sea herring in numbers, nor been as famous as the cod. If the English sailor, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, had been ashore in the springtime instead of on his ship when he gave the Cape its name, it might now be called Cape Alewife. Though they are only part of a multitude of other lives that nurtured the American past, the alewives should be given high and special credit. William Bradford’s _Of Plymouth Plantation_ testifies to their vital importance in the Pilgrims’ first year. After the _Mayflower_ left in early April of 1621, Squanto, that greatly helpful Indian, showed them “that in the middle of April they should have store enough come up the brook by which they began to build, and taught them how to take it, and where to get other provisions necessary for them.” This brook ran, as it still runs, through the town, so that the Plymouth inhabitants were lucky to have their supply of alewives close at hand--they seemed to have depended on them primarily for plantings, also taught them by Squanto. The fish came in “fat and fair” and amazingly plentiful after a lean winter full of apprehension. At first apparently each inhabitant took freely of the fish in the brook, but this seems to have resulted in “injuring the property of those near the place of taking.” As a result the Town Brook became town responsibility after a few years, and the fishing was regulated. The cost of a weir was distributed among the inhabitants and the fishing put under the charge of town officers, with fines set for taking alewives without permission. Innumerable fish laws were passed after that, from the Colony of Plymouth to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The fish ran comparatively free for a while, but through