The revolution has not yet done away a fanatical law passed by the quakers, prohibiting the catching of these fish on a sunday; which, considering the short time they remain in the river, is highly impolitic. There are thirteen fisheries within ten miles of Philadelphia; allowing only eight sundays in the season, and ten thousand shads lost in each of the twenty-four hours, a very moderate calculation, the aggregate loss to Philadelphia, and the adjacent country, is eighty thousand fish, weighing five pounds each, on an average. I say _loss_; for the return of the fish is the same now as it was a hundred and thirty years ago, when only a few dozen were taken in the season by the Indians. There is also a small fish which comes up the rivers with the shad; the shoals this year have been uncommonly large; upwards of ten thousand have been taken at one hawl. Like the shad, it takes salt well; and, from it's having some resemblance to a _herring_, they give it that name, though very different from the herring which visits the shores of Europe. I believe there is no instance of a herring running a hundred and fifty miles up a fresh water river, or existing at all in water perfectly fresh. The above particulars you may depend upon; they were communicated to me by Mr. West, who is proprietor of the largest shad-fisheries on the Delaware. This river also abounds in cat-fish, perch, jack, eels, and a great variety of others; above all, in sturgeon; which are frequently caught by accident in the shad-nets, and either boiled for their oil, or suffered to rot on the, shores, being very seldom sent to market: when this is the case, they are sold for a mere trifle, chiefly to emigrants. The Americans have conceived a violent antipathy to this fish. I recollect no instance of seeing it at their tables. They have every externals appearance of the european sturgeon, but in other respects must be _very different_, or the Americans lose one of the best fisheries in the world. Enclosed is an extract from general Lincoln's letter on the migration of fish. He endeavours to prove, that river fish, after their passage to the sea, whatever time they remain there, always return to the original waters in which they were spawned, unless some unnatural obstructions are thrown in their way. Yours, &c. In an old History of Bermuda, published in the year 1661, is the following passage:-- "There is great store of fish, which being mostly unknown to the English, they gave them such names as best _liked_ them, as _porgie-fish, hog-fish, yellow-tails, cony-fish_, &c." EXTRACT.