to prevent offensive decomposition and to increase the availability of the nitrogen and phosphoric acid.
Fish manures are prepared and used in considerable quantities, especially along the northeastern coast in America, in Norway, and other regions where the supply of material is abundant. Fish manure is exported in considerable quantities from Norway.
In localities where it can be readily obtained from fishermen, fish-scrap is frequently used without preparation of any kind. Naturally, this product is very variable in composition, the nitrogen ranging from 2.5 to 8 per cent. and the phosphoric acid from 2 to 6 per cent. The fertilizing constituents of this material are less available than those of the dried and finely ground fish. The whole fish are also sometimes used as a manure, either directly or composted with other materials. It is stated in Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston, 1856), that the Indian Squanto first taught the New England colonists to use the menhaden as a fertilizer for corn, instructing them to put the fish under the hills at the time of planting. (See also Manures and Manuring.) Consult: Voorhees, Fertilizers (New York, 1898); Aikman, Manures and the Principles of Manuring (Edinburgh, 1894); Storer, Agriculture (7th ed., New York, 1897).
FISH OF PARADISE. An East Indian fish (Macropodus viridiauratus) related to the gouramis, and noted for its extended fins and brilliant colors. It is cultivated for ornamental aquariums.
FISH-OWL. See Ketupa.
FISH PLATE (so called from overlapping, like the scales of a fish). A name given to a flat plate or bar of iron employed in pairs to connect the ends of adjacent rails in railway track. The two plates are placed on opposite sides of the webs of the rails, and are held by bolts passing through the plates and the webs of the two rails. The fish-plate joint was invented in America, in 1830, by Col. R. L. Stevens, and was first used on the Camden and Amboy Railroad. In order to increase the strength of the joint, the angle bar was devised about 1868 or 1870, having a vertical web like the fish plate and an inclined flange extending over the rail-base. The angle-bar joint is now almost universally employed. A full discussion of rail-joints is contained in Tratman, Railway Track and Track Work (New York, 1900). See Railways.
FISHTAIL PALM. See Caryota.
FISK, Clinton Bowen (1828-90). An American soldier and politician. He was born at Griggsville, N. Y., spent some years as a merchant in Michigan, and then removed to Saint Louis, Mo. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the Union Army, and in 1865 was brevetted major-general. Subsequently he devoted his life largely to the interests of the colored race; was assistant commissioner in the Freedmen's Bureau, and was instrumental in founding Fisk University. In 1884 he left the Republican Party and identified himself with the temperance movement. He was Prohibition candidate for Governor of New Jersey in 1886, and for President of the United States in 1888.
FISK, Fidelia (1816-64). An American missionary. She was born in Shelbourne, Mass.; graduated from Mount Holyoke, went to Persia as a missionary of the American Board among the Nestorians in 1843, and later became first principal of the seminary for women at Oroomiah. She wrote Recollections of Mary Lyon (1866). Consult D. T. Fiske, A Memoir of Fidelia Fisk; Faith Working by Love (Boston, 1869).
FISK, James, Jr. (1834-72). An American stock speculator. He was born in Bennington, Vt., the son of a peddler, and received scanty schooling. After trying various other occupations, he took up that of his father, and finally attracted the attention of Jordan & Marsh, the Boston merchants, of whom he bought his wares, and as a member of that firm enriched them and himself by shrewd bargaining with the Government and, it was said, by smuggling cotton through the lines during the Civil War. Four years later he opened a brokerage office in New York City. He picked up a precarious living for some time, until Daniel Drew set him up in business with a man named Belden, using them as his agents in his famous struggle with Cornelius Vanderbilt for the control of the Erie Railway. As a result of a compromise, the Drew-Fisk interest combined with the Eldridge-Gould interest, forced the Vanderbilt faction out of the directorate, installing Fisk and Jay Gould in their stead. This marked the beginning of the notorious association of Jay Gould and James Fisk, which terminated only with the death of Fisk. Gould became president of the Erie Railroad, and Fisk the vice-president and comptroller. From their headquarters a campaign of bribery and corruption was carried on that brought under the power of these men city, State, and Federal officials, judges and legislatures, reaching its climax in the gold conspiracy of 1869 and ‘Black Friday,’ when an attempt was made to control President Grant himself. A quarrel with one of his partners, E. S. Stokes, three years later, culminated in his death at the hands of the latter. Consult: Adams, Chapters of Erie, and Other Essays (New York, 1886); Black, Essays (New York, 1890).
FISK, Wilbur (1792-1839). An American educator and clergyman. He was born at Brattleboro, Vt.; graduated at Brown University, and afterwards studied law, but in 1818 entered the Methodist ministry. With others, he founded an academy at Wilbraham, Mass., of which, in 1825, he became the first principal. He also aided in the founding of Wesleyan University, at Middletown, Conn., and became its first president in 1831. He had previously refused the presidency of La Grange College (Alabama), and in 1836 declined an election as bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Among his works are: Sermons and Lectures on Universalism; Reply to Pierpont on the Atonement; The Calvinistic Controversy (1837); and Travels in Europe (1838). For his biography, consult Holdich (New York, 1842) and Prentice (Boston, 1890).
FISKE, Amos Kidder (1842—). An American journalist and author, born at Whitefield, N. H. He graduated at Harvard in 1866, was admitted to the bar of New York County in 1868, assisted G. T. Curtis (q.v.) in the preparation of the latter's Life of Daniel Webster (2 vols., 1870), contributed to the revised edition of the American Cyclopædia of Ripley and Dana (1873-76), and for many years was con-
