The whiting inhabits the seas which wash the whole European coast, often approaching the shore in shoals, and are taken annually in great numbers.

3. ABDOMINALES.

The fishes belonging to this order have the ventral fins under the abdomen placed behind, and not attached to the bones of the shoulder. It is much the most numerous and important of the great division of the Malacopterygeans. It includes most of our fresh-water fishes, a great number of marine species, and many like the salmon, which betake themselves to the rivers in the spawning season to deposit their ova. We shall limit our remarks to the species which are essentially marine, such as the Salmonidæ, the Clupeadæ, and a few others.

SALMONIDÆ.

The fishes of this family are graceful in shape, and have the body clothed in scales; they have two dorsals, the first with soft rays, followed by a second, which is smaller, formed without rays, and adipose—that is, formed simply of a skin filled with fatty matter, unsupported by osseous rays. They inhabit the seas of temperate and northern regions; ascending the rivers at certain seasons, and, in some instances, living exclusively in the great rivers and watercourses. They are found even in the most elevated mountain brooks. The grayling or shad, guiniad, sprat, trout, and the salmon, the type of the family, belong to the group.

The genus Salmo includes three species, namely, Salmo salar, S. croix, and S. trutta, the trout. Of these, S. salar (Fig. 377) has the body long, the muzzle roundish, but more so in the male than in the female, the upper jaw provided with a fossette, into which the point of the lower jaw penetrates; the back is a slaty blue, the sides and lower part of the body of a silvery diaphanous white, with great black spots scattered round the upper part of the head, round the upper edge of the eye, and over the operculum or covering. Some brownish irregular spots, variable both in form and size, are sprinkled over the sides. In other respects their colours are subject to variations according to circumstances. Before assuming the characters here indicated, however, the salmon has passed through three stages, each of which is marked by peculiarities worthy of being noted. The young salmon (Fig. 378) is greyish and striped with black. At the end of a year it has acquired a fine metallic hue. "The other parts," according to Mr. Blanchard, "are of a dazzling steel-blue; eight or ten large spots of the same brilliant blue cover it as with a silvery mantle on the sides; between these spots a reddish, or, rather, brightish-rusty iron colour prevails; a black spot is usually observable in the middle of the operculum. The belly is of a fine diaphanous blue in the parr" (Fig. 379).

Dr. Bertram gives a very clear and intelligible account of the early days of the salmon, which was at one time veiled in mystery. "The spawn, deposited by the parent fish in October, November, and December, lies in the river till about April or May, when it quickens into life. I have already described the changes apparent in the salmon's egg, from the time of its fructification till the birth of the fish. The infant fry are of course very helpless, and are seldom seen during the first week or two of their existence, when they carry about with them, as a provision for food, a portion of the egg from whence they emanated. At that time the fish is about half an inch in size, and presents such a singular appearance that no person seeing it would ever believe that it would grow into a fine grilse or salmon. About fifty days is required for the animal to assume the shape of a perfect fish; before that time it might be taken for anything else than a young salmon. At the end of two years it has changed into a smolt. After absorbing its umbilical bag, which it takes a period of twenty to forty days to accomplish, the young salmon may be seen about its birthplace, timid and weak, hiding about the stones, and always apparently of the same colour as the surroundings of its sheltering place. The transverse bars of the parr, however, speedily become apparent, and the fish begins to grow with considerable rapidity, especially if it is to be a twelvemonth smolt, and this is very speedily seen at such a place as the Stormontfield ponds. The young fish continue to grow for a little more than two years before the whole number make the change from parr to smolt, and seek the salt water. Half the number of any one hatching begin to change at a little over twelve months from the date of their coming to life. And thus there is the extraordinary anomaly of fish of the same hatching being at one and the same time parr of half an ounce in weight, and grilse weighing four pounds. The smolts of the first year return from the sea, while their brothers and sisters are timidly disporting in the breeding shallows of the upper streams." A late sea-going smolt explains the anomaly of a spring salmon.

It thus appears that, in its first stage, the Young Salmon (Fig. 378) is called a parr: during the second it is a smolt, namely, a parr plus a jacket of silvery scales. While they continue in the state of parr they lead a secluded life, totally unable to endure salt water, which would kill them. When they have become smolts the fish betake themselves in bands to the sea. The sea-feeding being favourable, and the fish strong enough for the salt water, a rapid growth is the consequence. After that they disappear, spreading themselves over the wide world of the ocean. At the end of two months of a life mysterious and so far unknown, these fishes reappear in the rivers, returning to their native pools; but how changed! Quantum mutati! The smolt, which has lived in the river two or three years, and only attained the length of six or eight inches, returns at the end of two months' sojourn in the sea, weighing three to four, and after six months, ten or twelve pounds. It is now a grilse.

After depositing their eggs the grilse remain some time in the fresh water, when they again go to the sea. This second sojourn, of about two months, is sufficient to send it back weighing from six to twelve pounds. It is now an adult salmon. Each new visit to the sea brings the salmon back increased in size in proportion to the duration of the voyage. In the month of March, 1845, the Duke of Athole took a salmon in the Tay after it had deposited its eggs; he marked it by attaching a metal label to it. It weighed ten pounds. The same individual with its metal label was again fished up after five weeks and three days' absence. It now weighed twenty-one pounds, having in the meantime travelled forty miles down the river to the sea. This fish must, however, have made a long sea run during these thirty-eight days and its seeking up the river again.

In most circumstances, according to Mr. Blanchard, to whom we are indebted for much information relative to the development and migration of these fishes, salmon of various ages, which have nevertheless sojourned in the sea as grilse, adult salmon, and others intermediate between them, whose first sojourn at sea has extended to eight or ten months, ascend the rivers together in an order no less varied, the older individuals heading the column, the youngest bringing up the rear.

When the period for depositing their eggs approaches, a male and female pair off, as it were; seeming to choose, by a common accord, a retired place in which to spawn. Here both male and female employ themselves in hollowing out a nest in the strand, some eight or nine inches deep, wherein the female deposits her eggs, which the male fertilizes by shedding a milky fluid over them, sheltering the eggs afterwards by a covering of sand.

The salmon only ascends the rivers to spawn. They eagerly return afterwards to salt water. When enjoying themselves in the water they swim slowly, floating near the surface; but in pursuit of any object, or if threatened with danger, they dart out of the water with extraordinary promptitude. The tail is, in fact, a true oar moved by powerful muscles; a low waterfall is to the salmon no serious obstacle when it is impelled to ascend to its breeding-place. Curving its vertebral column, it forms itself into a sort of elastic spring; the arc of which being suddenly unbent, strikes the water with great force with the tail, and in the rebound it leaps to the height of several yards, clearing waterfalls of considerable height. If it falls without accomplishing its object, it repeats the manœuvre until it is at last successful. It is especially when the leader of the band makes a successful leap that the others, acquiring new spirit from its example, throw themselves upwards until their emulation is rewarded by success.

Some of the British waterfalls are celebrated for their salmon leaps. Wales, Scotland, and Ireland have each their celebrated leaps; in Pembrokeshire, Argyleshire, and at Ballyshannon, in county Donegal, and at Leixlip. The cataract of Leixlip is upwards of twenty feet high, and the country people make a holiday in order to see the salmon clear its height. These acrobat fishes frequently fall before they finally succeed, and it is not unusual for the people to place osier baskets to trap them in their fall. At the cataract of Kilmorack, in Inverness-shire (Fig. 380), the inhabitants living near the river have a practice of fixing branches of trees on the edge of the rocks. By means of these branches they contrive to catch the fishes which have failed in their leap; it is even asserted that sportsmen have been known to kill them on the wing, as it were, in their leap. But the exploit, attributed to Lord Lovat by Dr. Franklin, is perhaps the nearest approach to the fabulous which we have met with.

Having remarked that great numbers of salmon failed in their efforts to surmount the Falls of Kilmorack, and that they generally fell on the bank at the foot of the fall, Lord Lovat conceived the idea of placing a furnace and a frying-pan on a point of rock overhanging the river. After their unsuccessful effort some of the unhappy salmon would fall accidentally into the frying-pan. The noble lord could thus boast that the resources of his country were so abundant, that on placing a furnace and frying-pan on the banks of their rivers, the salmon would leap into it of their own accord, without troubling the sportsman to catch them. It is more probable, however, that Lord Lovat knew that the way to enjoy salmon in perfection is to cook it when fresh from the water, and before the richer parts of the fish have ceased to curd. The principal salmon found in the market are Tweed, Tay, North Esk, Spey, Skye, Norwegian, and above all Severn, said to be the best which comes to market, neither of which must be confounded with the imported American variety—the origin of the prevalent cheap London kipper—and the Cape, or red-mouthed variety. Cape and Americans are at once distinguished by their flesh boiling a blanched white. Tweed salmon are more varied; and this river, famous in song, is also noted for its production of the greatest proportion of bull-trout. The Tay yields the largest grilse and salmon, but the Spey follows fast in her wake; Tay fish sometimes weigh sixty pounds. The minor Scotch rivers produce smaller but superior fish. Skye and West-coast grilse are short, thick, and small-headed, and proportionally more abundant. Trout are numerous; sea-bull, burn, or loch, and the so-called herring-trout, are the varieties usually met with. The whitling of the Tweed, grayling of Tay, and tinnock of North and South Esk, are young sea and bull-trout, abounding in March and April, when a sportsman will land fifty or sixty daily, weighing from one quarter to a pound. Trout flesh varies in colour from a clear white to a dark red; the North Esk red trout is most esteemed. The best run from a pound and a half to three pounds. The burn-trout is always red, and has been killed as heavy as thirty pounds. The herring-trout, never found in English rivers, and only caught on our coast by herring-trawlers, is a special favourite: may it not be the whitling of the French rivers? In all other species colour varies with locality, and cannot be accounted for.

We have seen how rapidly the young salmon increase in size in the sea. During this stage of existence the salmon, being a carnivorous fish, rapidly develops itself from the grilse to the adult state. From a careful analysis made by Dr. Wilson Johnston of the Bengal army, it appears that there is no recorded instance of healthy salmon partaking of herring or sand-lances; the tape-worm and other conditions of perverted appetite persisting in all. Tape-worm is most common in the hybrid Norwegian, and explains the reason why Clupeadæ are sometimes found in their stomachs. Should the fish not be charged with spawn, it will shortly return to sport among the dancing waves; but if matured for breeding, at which period the female shows a dirty brown hue, and the male a black, they mate, choose a spot for the salmon nest, and there deposit myriads of ova. The longer a salmon continues in the river the duller their colour becomes; the flavour is greatly depreciated; so that Izaac Walton's statement, that "the further they get from the sea they be both fatter and better," is dead against our daily experience.

During the period of river residence salmon never feed. It avails not to argue that fear acts as an emetic and empties the stomach; the incontestable fact remains that the entire gastro-intestinal tract ab ore ad ano is in ninety-nine per cent. devoid of any trace of food. Juvenile experience on the part of the fish, recurring as a phantasm, causes them to snap at a shining artificial minnow or a gaudy fly, but they never rise out of the water; the bait must dip to them, and when hooked they shake the intruder as a terrier does a rat. If salmon never feed in fresh water, what is the rationale of their existing there? Well, the superabundant store of fat deposited in the areolar tissue appears to furnish a material which is functionally homologous to the fatty supply stored by the Asiatic and African doomba sheep, which is drawn upon to sustain life-action, when névès, avalanches, or a heavy snow-fall imprisons the herbage outcrop. That continued muscular exertion can be sustained without special fatigue on non-nitrogenous diet, Fick and Wislicensus have proved by the recent ascent of the Faulhorn: it is moreover notorious that the chamois hunter and the Hindoo runner prefer fats and saccharoids. Is there any show of reason, then, why the salmon should not maintain its fresh-water muscular tear and wear by a stock of non-nitrogenous fatty material? That such is the true philosophy of salmon river life is borne out by the following facts:

1st. So soon as the exhausting secretions of the milt and roe take place the spent fish turn seaward to recruit.

2nd. The digestive secretions are not eliminated in the absence of food; the most recent experience of physiology finds its echo here. Your boxer trains on meat or nitrogenous aliment, but enters the list on hydro-carbons (fats, saccharines, and amylaceous substances). The salmon get into condition by immediately appropriating the albumen of the echinodermal ova, enter their life-struggle of wintry months in river water with an incorporated stock of potential calorific aliment, convertible, as occasion demands, into organic muscular mechanical effort.

The British rivers in which the salmon abound are the Severn, the Wye, the Tweed, the Tay, the Don, and the Dee, with many of their tributaries, and in Ireland, the Shannon. Besides these, many of the watercourses of lesser note adjoining the coast have been renowned for their salmon fisheries. Some of the Scottish rivers, especially, are famous for the size and quality as well as numbers of salmon. In days not very distant from ours, farm servants made it a condition of their hiring that salmon should not be served to them more than three days in the week. These times are changed. In the districts in which this condition was the most stringently insisted on, the proprietors derive a princely revenue from this source alone. The Tay fisheries yield a revenue of seventeen thousand pounds per annum. The Spey, for its length the richest in Scotland, produces twelve thousand pounds per annum. The river is only a hundred and twenty miles from its source to the sea, and its picturesque banks are celebrated in a local ballad, which says, not very harmoniously, that

but there's "no standing water in the Spey!" The river drains thirteen hundred miles of mountains, many of whose bases are more than a thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Tweed, which has been "poached" and plundered, by its proprietors using unfair implements, until there was scarcely a fish in its upper waters, is slowly recovering under legislative enactments, and its rental is now seven thousand five hundred pounds.

Salmon abounds in the Loire and its affluents, but is much more rare in the Seine and Marne. They enter the Rhine and the Elbe, and most of the great rivers of the north of Europe. In France they were formerly found in the rivers of Brittany, and in the Gironde. They are now very rare in these rivers. The coast of Picardy is well furnished, but they are rare in Upper and Lower Normandy. In Norway, especially in the district of Drontheim, the salmon fishery is conducted on a large scale on the sea-shore as well as in the interior waters. The Baltic is rich in salmon. Considerable fisheries are carried on in the waters of the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia, as well as in the waters of Swedish Laponia. The takes vary every year; in 1860 being much above the average throughout Great Britain, or as in 1772, when the fish were so scarce in the Tweed, that it was believed they had gone off the coast. They invariably go to leeward with the wind, and have been caught a hundred miles off land. Salmon are in condition at various periods of the year, apparently not depending on the latitude of the rivers. Thus the Tay is one of the earliest rivers, while the North and South Esk are the latest, yet they debouch within a few miles of each other. It is the opinion of Mr. Joseph Johnston of Montrose (whose acknowledged fifty years' practical experience carries weight with it in all fishery parliamentary committees) that the Stormontfield ponds, by artificially rearing the parr, render them more helpless when they commence river life on their own account. As a natural result, the death-ratio is enormously increased—cui bono? especially when the parr have only the option of leaving, and are not compelled to go out. We must, therefore, receive Dr. Bertram's narrative, much as we respect his authority, with some reserve. A seed will not grow, nor will a parr ever become a grilse, unless under given conditions: it is therefore an easy matter to explain the anomaly of a parr passing seaward becoming a four-pound grilse, while its twin-brother remaining in the breeding-pond is conditionally developed as only a half-ounce samlet, yet none the less a dwarfed grilse—the possibility of growth existing all the while, although it was not actively evoked by physical surroundings.

The modes of procedure in salmon fishery are very various. Spearing with tridents, and liestering with a weighted hook by torch-light, "burning the water," as the Scotch have it, as well as trammel, wear, and cruive-wear fishing, are now prohibited. Legal fishing in rivers is confined to row nets, and fly and bait rod fishing, fixtures being illegal since 1810. Wear shot; a larger and heavier row-net placed at the meeting of the waters; stake, fly, and bag-nets are used in the open sea. The latter is most in vogue, the former being almost superseded by the fly. Fixtures on the sea coast were held to be legal in Lord Kintore's case by House of Lords in 1828, and continued so till the passing of the recent Act. By this act all legal modes of fishing are in action from the first of February to the fourteenth of September, a period, however, now curtailed by twenty-eight days,—netting being illegal from Saturday to Monday in each week. It remains to be seen whether the gourmet will enjoy his salmon better after its Sabbath rest; perhaps its ragout will then haunt him as it did Talleyrand's abbé, who, instead of the mea culpa of the Confiteor, iterated, "Ah! le bon saumon! ah! le bon saumon!"

A bag-net is composed of three chambers; the first, which is the widest, is at the entrance. The next is the doubling, and is one inch to the mesh narrower than the outer. The last is the fish court, where the fish by a simple and ingenious contrivance are prevented from finding the door by which they entered. It is partly floated by corks and partly by an empty cask on the head or principal riding rope. It is set in the sea by ropes attached to anchors, one anchor rope to the head of the net and one on each wing at the entrance of the bag. The bag-leader is a separate net held by a rope and anchor on the land side, and is fastened to the bag net. The principle of fishing is this: the tide makes a curve on the leader of the bag, in this curve the fish swim into the net. Bags are adapted for any kind of coast, and six or seven are run out to sea end on. Fly nets are the same as bags in principle, but slightly altered so as to adapt them for being fixed to stakes driven into the sand instead of being moored by rope and anchor; they are always used where the tide ebbs. Stake nets are expensive, and seldom used now-a-days. When in fishing trim they are, however, more deadly than fly nets: their chambers are three times as large, but the principle of fishing in bag and stake nets is identical, leaders being used in all. It is noteworthy that trout are never caught in these leaders.

ESOCIDÆ.

This family includes the Pike, which, being a fresh-water fish, need not now occupy our attention; it includes also the singular genus Stomias, and the Flying-fish, Exocœtus.

The Stomias have a body much elongated, the muzzle being very short, the mouth very deeply cleft, the opercula reduced to small membranous laminæ; the maxillarius fixed to the cheek; the inter-maxillary palatine and maxillary bones are rather sparingly furnished with teeth, and those are long and hooked. Similar teeth are observable on the tongue. The ventral fins are placed far back, and the dorsal fin is placed opposite the anal fin, on the hinder extremity of the body.

Only two species of this genus are known: the one of the Mediterranean, Stomia boa (Fig. 381), the other of the Atlantic Ocean, S. barbatus, so called from the long barbula on the chin. Both species are black in colour, with numerous small silvery spots on the abdomen. The body of S. boa is thin, compressed, covered with little thin scales of blackish blue, much spotted on the back and abdomen, a little brighter on the sides—the head, in some respects, recalling that of a serpent.

Flying is so much associated in our minds with the usual denizens of the air, that the idea of flying-fishes seems to be a contradiction. Nevertheless, some fishes possess that power, the fins being transformed into wings, which they are enabled to raise for a few seconds. These wings, however, are neither long nor powerful, for they rather act the part of a parachute than wings. The distinguishing characteristic of the Exocœtus, or flying-fish, is the pectoral fins, nearly the length of the body, the head flattened above and on the sides, the lower part of the body furnished with a longitudinal series of carinated scales on each side, the dorsal fin placed above the anal, the eyes large, and the jaws furnished with small pointed teeth.

The Flying-fishes (Fig. 382) in their own element are harassed by attacks of other inhabitants of the ocean, and when under the excitement of fear they take to the air, they are equally exposed to the attacks of aquatic birds, especially the various species of gulls. We have said that, in their leap from the water, their fins sustain them rather as parachutes than wings, with which they beat the air. Mr. Bennett's description is pretty clear on this point. "I have never," he says, "been able to see any percussion of the pectoral fins during flight; and the greatest length of time I have seen this volatile fish on the fly has been thirty seconds by the watch, and the longest flight, mentioned by Captain Basil Hall, has been two hundred yards, but he thinks that subsequent observation has extended the space. The usual height of their flight, as seen above the surface of the water, is from two to three feet, but I have known them come on board at the height of fourteen feet and upwards. And they have been well ascertained to come into the chains of a line of battle ship, which is considered to be upwards of twenty feet. But it must not be supposed that they have the power of raising themselves into the air after having left their native element; for on watching them I have often seen them fall much below the elevation at which they first rose from the water; nor have I ever in any instance seen them rise from the height to which they first sprang, for I conceive the elevation they take depends on the power of the first spring."

The most common species is E. volitans. Its brilliant colouring would seem designed to point it out to its enemies, against whom it is totally defenceless. A dazzling silvery splendour pervades its surface. The summit of its head, its back, and its sides, are of azure blue; this blue becomes spotted upon the dorsal fin, the pectoral fin, and the tail. This fish is the common prey of the more voracious fishes, such as the shark, and the sea-birds; its enemies abound in the air and water. If it succeeds in escaping the Charybdis of the water, the chances are in favour of its coming to grief in the Scylla of the atmosphere—if it escapes the jaws of the shark, it will probably fall to the share of the sea-gull. The dolphin is also a formidable enemy to the much-persecuted flying-fish. Captain Basil Hall gives a very animated description of their mode of attack.[17] He was in a prize, a low Spanish schooner, rising not above two feet and a half out of the water. "Two or three dolphins had ranged past the ship in all their beauty. The ship in her progress through the water had put up a shoal of these little things (flying-fish), which took their flight to windward. A large dolphin which had been keeping company with us abreast of the weather gangway at the depth of two or three fathoms, and as usual glistening most beautifully in the sun, no sooner detected our poor dear friends take wing than he turned his head towards them, darted to the surface, and leaped from the water with a velocity little short, as it seemed to us, of a cannon-ball. But though the impetus with which he shot himself into the air gave him an initial velocity greatly exceeding that of the flying-fish, the start which his fated prey had got enabled them to keep ahead of him for a considerable time. The length of the dolphin's first spring could not be less than ten yards, and after he fell we could see him gliding like lightning through the water for a moment, when he again rose, and shot upwards with considerably greater velocity than at first, and of course to a still greater distance. In this manner the merciless pursuer seemed to stride along the sea with fearful rapidity, while his brilliant coat sparkled and flashed in the sun quite splendidly. As he fell headlong in the water at the end of each leap, a series of circles were sent far over the surface, for the breeze, just enough to keep the royals and topgallant studding-sails extended, was hardly felt as yet below.

"The group of wretched flying-fishes, thus hotly pursued, at length dropped into the sea; but we were rejoiced to observe that they merely touched the top of the swell, and instantly set off again in a fresh and even more vigorous flight. It was particularly interesting to observe that the direction they took now was quite different from the one in which they had set out, implying but too obviously that they had detected their fierce enemy, who was following them with giant steps along the waves, and was gaining rapidly upon them. His pace, indeed, was two or three times as swift as theirs, poor little things! and the greedy dolphin was fully as quick-sighted; for whenever they varied their flight in the smallest degree, he lost not the tenth part of a second in shaping his course so as to cut off the chase; while they, in a manner really not unlike that of the hare, doubled more than once upon the pursuer. But it was soon plainly to be seen that the strength and confidence of the flying-fish were fast ebbing; their flights became shorter and shorter, and their course more fluttering and uncertain, while the leaps of the dolphin seemed to grow more vigorous at each bound. Eventually this skilful sea-sportsman seemed to arrange his springs so as to fall just under the very spot on which the exhausted flying-fish were about to drop. This catastrophe took place at too great a distance for us to see from the deck what happened; but on our mounting high on the rigging, we may be said to have been in at the death; for then we could discover that the unfortunate little creatures, one after another, either popped right into the dolphin's jaws as they lighted on the water, or were snapped up instantly after."

THE CLUPEADÆ.

Of this family the herring is the graceful, useful, and well-known type, to which also the pilchard, the shad, and the anchovy belong. The Clupea have the body longish and compressed, especially at the belly, where it comes to an edge; it is clothed with large scales, forming towards the belly a saw-like edge, which is very thin and easily removed. One dorsal fin without spinous rays, and one ventral, both placed near the middle of the body, are its locomotive characteristics.

The Herring, Clupea harengus (Fig. 383), is too well known to require description; its appearance is beautiful; but we shall only remark here that its back, which in the fish after death is of an indigo bluish colour, is green during life; the other parts vary considerably in their colours and markings, sometimes representing written characters, which ignorant fishermen have considered to be words of mystery. In November, 1587, two herrings were taken on the coast of Norway, on the bodies of which were markings resembling Gothic printed characters. These herrings had the signal honour of being presented to the King of Norway, Frederick II. This superstitious prince turned pale at sight of this supposed prodigy. On the back of these innocent inhabitants of the deep he saw certain cabalistic characters, which he thought announced his death and that of his queen. Learned men were consulted. Their science, as reported, enabled them to read distinctly words expressing the sentiment, "Very soon you will cease to fish herrings, as well as other people." Other savants were assembled, who gave another explanation; but in 1588 the king died, and the people were firmly convinced that the two herrings were celestial messengers charged to announce to the Norwegian people the approaching end of the monarch.

This fish abounds throughout the entire Northern Ocean in immense shoals, which are found in the bays of Greenland, Lapland, and round the whole coast of the British Islands. Great shoals of them occupy the gulfs of Sweden, of Norway, and of Denmark, the Baltic and the Zuyder Zee, the Channel, and the coast of France up to the Loire, beyond which they never appear to be found. But the finest herrings are caught on Loch Fyne, on the west coast of Scotland.

The herrings are gregarious fishes, and live in great shoals closely packed together; shoals to be counted not by hundreds, but by thousands and tens of thousands, in many a shore and bay. It was the favourite theory, not very long ago, that herrings emigrated to and from the arctic regions. It was asserted, by the supporters of this theory, that in the inaccessible seas of high northern latitudes herrings existed in overwhelming numbers, an open sea within the arctic circle affording a safe and bounteous feeding-ground. At the proper season vast bodies gathered themselves together into one great army, which, in numbers exceeding the powers of imagination, departed for more southern regions. This great Heer, or army, was subdivided, by some instinct, as they reached the different shores, led, according to the ideas of fishermen, by herrings of more than ordinary size and sagacity, one division taking the west side of Britain, while another took the east side, the result being an adequate and well-divided supply of herrings, which penetrated every bay and arm of the sea round our coast, from Wick to Yarmouth. Closer observation, however, shows that this theory has no existence in fact. Lacepede denies that those periodical journeyings take place. Valenciennes also rejects them. It is true that the herrings have disappeared in certain neighbourhoods in which they were formerly very plentiful; but it is also certain that, in many of the fishing stations, fish are taken all the year round. Moreover, the discovery that the herring of America is probably a distinct species from that of Europe (which, smoked, is known as the "Digby Chick") is against the theory. In short, there is a total absence of proof of their pretended migrations to high northern latitudes; and recent discoveries all tend to show that the herring is native to the shores on which it is taken.

"It has been demonstrated," says Dr. Bertram, "that the herring is really a native of our immediate seas, and can be caught all the year round on the coast of the three kingdoms. The fishing begins at the island of Lewis, in the Hebrides, in the month of May, and goes on as the year advances, till in July it is being prosecuted off the coast of Caithness; while in autumn and winter we find large supplies of herrings at Yarmouth; there is a winter fishery in the Firth of Forth. Moreover, this fish is found in the south long before it ought to be there, according to the emigration theory. It has been deduced, from a consideration of the annual takes of many years, that the herring exists in distinct races, which arrive at maturity month after month. It is well known that the herrings taken at Wick in July are quite different from those caught at Dunbar in August and September; indeed I would go further, and say that even at Wick each month has its changing shoal, and that as one race appears for capture another disappears, having fulfilled its mission. It is certain that the herrings of these different seasons vary considerably in size and appearance; localities are marked by distinctive features. Thus the well-known Loch Fyne herring is essentially different from that of the Firth of Forth; and those differ again, in many particulars, from those caught off Yarmouth. In fact, the herring never ventures far from the shore where it is taken; and its condition, when it is caught, is just an index of the feeding it has enjoyed in its particular locality. The superiority of flavour of the herring taken in our great land-locked salt-water lochs is undoubted. Whether or not resulting from the depth and body of water, from more plentiful marine vegetation, or from the greater variety of land food likely to be washed into these inland seas, has not yet been determined, but it is certain that the herrings of our western sea-lochs are infinitely superior to those captured in the more open sea." "Moreover," he adds, "it is now known, from the inquiries of the late Mr. Mitchell and other authorities on the geographical distribution of the herring, that the fish has never been noticed as being at all abundant in the arctic regions."

The herring feeds on small crustaceans, fishes just hatched, and even on the fry of its own species. On the other hand, its enemies are the most formidable inhabitants of the ocean; the whales destroy them by thousands, but man, above all, carries on a war which threatens to be one of extermination. In fact, the herring-fishery has been to certain nations the great cause of their prosperity. It was the foundation of Dutch independence. Silk manufacture, coffee, tea, spices, which are productive of great commercial movements, address themselves only to the wants of luxury or fashion. The produce of the herring fishery, on the contrary, is one of necessity to the people; and Holland would have languished and quickly disappeared, with its fictitious territory, if the sea had not added to its commercial industry this inexhaustible mine of wealth. That vast field it has worked with persevering ardour. Struggling for an existence, it has conquered. Every year numerous vessels leave the coast of Holland for this precious marine harvest. The herring fishery is, for the Dutch people, the most important of maritime expeditions. It is with them known as the "great fishery." Whaling is known as the "small fishery." The great fishery is a golden mine to Holland; it is, besides, a very ancient occupation with ourselves. We find it flourishing in the twelfth century; for, in 1195, according to the historians, the city of Dunwich, in the county of Suffolk, was obliged to furnish the king with twenty-four thousand herrings. We also find mention made of the herring fishery in a chronicle of the Monastery of Evesham in the year 709.

Towards the year 1030 the French sent vessels into the North Sea from Dieppe for this fishing, nearly a century before the Dutch made the attempt; but as early as the thirteenth century that enterprising people employed two thousand boats in this industry. The Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians also threw themselves into this trade at an early period. The French, Danes, and Swedes furnish at the present time only sufficient for home consumption. The monopoly of foreign trade belongs to the English, Dutch, and Norwegians. "The quantity of herrings gathered every year by our neighbours beyond the Channel," says Moquin-Tandon, "is truly enormous. In Yarmouth alone four hundred ships, of from forty to sixty tons, are equipped, the largest being manned by twelve men. The revenue derived from this fleet is about seven hundred thousand pounds. In 1857 three of these fishing-boats, belonging to the same proprietors, carried home three millions seven hundred and sixty-two thousand fishes."

Since the beginning of this century the Scottish fishermen have emulated the zeal of the English. In a paper communicated to the British Association in 1854, Mr. Cleghorn, who has paid great attention to the subject, states "that there are nine hundred and twenty Wick boats engaged in the fishing, and that the produce was ninety-five thousand six hundred and eighty barrels" in one week alone, this being, however, a falling off of sixty-one thousand barrels from the previous year. The cause of this immense falling off was ascribed to a storm which had swept along the coast at the height of the season; but Mr. Cleghorn was inclined to ascribe it mainly to over-fishing, which had gradually diminished the number of herrings captured.

The boats employed by the French and Dutch in the herring fishery are about sixty tons burden. They generally depart for the Orkney and Shetland isles. They afterwards betake themselves to the German Ocean, and fish the Channel in November and December. These boats carry up to sixteen hands, according to their size. Arrived at their fishing ground, they cast their nets, as seen in Pl. XXIX.

The lines of the Dutch fishermen are five hundred feet in length, composed of fifty or sixty different nets. The upper parts of these nets are supported by empty barrels or cork-buoys, the lower edge being weighted with lead or stones, which are kept at a convenient depth by shortening or lengthening the cords by which the buoys are attached. The size of the mesh of the nets is such that the herrings of a certain size are caught in it by the gills and pectoral fins. If the first mesh is too large to hold them they pass through, and get caught by the next or succeeding mesh, which is smaller. The herring-fishery is regulated by Act of Parliament, and the legal mode of capture is by means of what is called a drift-net. The drift-net is made of fine twine, marked with squares of an inch each to allow for the escape of the young fish. The nets are measured by the barrel bulk, a net measuring fifty feet long by thirty-two deep, and each holding half a barrel. The drift is composed of many separate nets fastened together by means of a back rope, and each separate net of the series is marked off by a bladder or empty cask. The process is that described by Dr. Bertram in an article published in the "Cornhill Magazine." The writer had made his arrangement for a night at the herring fishery under the auspices of Francis Sinclair, a very gallant-looking fellow, who sails his own boat from Wick, and takes his own venture. Bounding over the waves with a good capful of wind, they had left the shore and beetling cliffs far behind them; they reached their fishing ground, where they tacked up and down, eagerly watching for the oily phosphorescent gleam which is indicative of herrings. "At last, after a lengthened cruise," he says, "our commander, who had been silent for half an hour, jumped up and called to action. 'Up, men, and at them!' was the order of the night. The preparations for shooting the nets at once began by lowering sail. Surrounding us on all sides was to be seen a moving world of boats; many with sails down, their nets floating in the water, and their crews at rest. Others were still flitting uneasily about, their skippers, like our own, anxious to shoot in the right place. By-and-by we were ready; the sucker goes splash into the water; the 'dog,' a large inflated bladder to mark the far end of the train, is heaved overboard, and the nets, breadth after breadth, follow as fast as the men can pay them out, till the immense train is all in the water, forming a perforated wall a mile long and many feet in depth; the 'dog' and the marking bladder floating and dipping in long zigzag lines, reminding one of the imaginary coils of the great sea-serpent. After three hours of quietude beneath a beautiful sky, the stars—

began to pale their fires, and, the gray dawn appearing, indicated that it was time to take stock. We found that the boat had floated quietly with the tide till we were a long distance from the harbour. The skipper had a presentiment that there were fish in his net; and the bobbing down of a few of the bladders made it almost a certainty, and he resolved to examine the drifts. By means of the swing rope the boat was hauled up to the nets. 'Hurrah!' exclaimed Murdoch of Skye; 'there's a lot of fish, skipper, and no mistake.' Murdoch's news was true; our nets were silvery with herrings—so laden, in fact, that it took a long time to haul them in. It was a beautiful sight to see the shimmering fish as they came up like a sheet of silver from the water, each uttering a weak death-chirp as it was flung into the bottom of the boat. Formerly the fish were left in the meshes of the net till the boat arrived in the harbour; but now, as the net is hauled on board, they are at once shaken out. As our silvery treasure showers into the boat we roughly guess our capture at fifty crans—a capital night's work."

But there is a reverse to this medal. Wick Bay is not always rippled by the land-breeze as on this occasion. "The herring fleet has been more than once overtaken by a fierce storm, where valuable lives have been lost, and thousands of pounds worth of netting and boats destroyed, and the gladdening sights of the herring fishery have been changed to wailing and sorrow."

The Yarmouth boats are decked vessels of from fifty to eighty tons, with attendant boats, costing about one thousand pounds, and having stowage for about fifty lasts; nominally, ten thousand, but, counted fisherwise, thirteen thousand, herrings, besides provision for a five or six days' voyage. Leaving a hand or two in charge of the vessel, the majority of the crew are out in the smaller boats, fishing.

The Dutch herring fishery is usually pursued during the night. When the nets are in the water the boat is left, as we have seen in Dr. Bertram's excursion, to drift in the meantime. Each boat is furnished with a lantern, which serves the double purpose of attracting the shoals of fish, and preventing collisions with other boats. The herring fishery is extremely capricious in its results; one or two boats have been known to carry into port the whole takings of a night. Valenciennes witnessed the capture of a hundred and ten thousand herrings in less than two hours. The nets are hauled in when moderately charged with fish by the crew; but it is often necessary to have recourse to the capstan in the process. Some of the hands are stationed to detach the fish from the nets; others detach the nets from the buoys; while others again fold up and stow away the nets for future use.

On the coast of Norway the electric telegraph is applied to the herring fishery, being employed to announce to the inhabitants of the fishing towns the approach of the shoals of fish. In the fiords of Norway, where the produce of the herring fishery is the principal means of existence to nearly the entire population, it often happened that the fish made its appearance at the most unexpected times, and on some parts of the coast the shoals could only be met by one or two boats. Before the boats from the bays and fiords could take part in the fishery, the herrings had deposited their spawn and returned to the open sea.

To prevent these disappointments, often repeated with great loss to the fishermen, the Norwegian government established, in 1857, a submarine electric cable, along the coast frequented by the herrings, of a hundred miles, with stations on shore at intervals conveniently placed for communicating with the villages inhabited by the fishermen. As soon as a shoal of herrings is known to be in the offing—and they can always be perceived at a considerable distance by the wave they raise—a telegram is despatched along the coast, which makes known in each village the approach to the bay in which the herrings have established themselves.

This important branch of industry has only assumed its real character since the fourteenth century, and its sudden and prodigious extension is due to the discovery of a simple Dutch fisherman, George Benkel, who died in 1397. To this man Holland owes much of its wealth. He discovered, in short, the art of curing the herring so as to preserve it for an indefinite time. From that moment the herring fishery assumed an unexpected importance, and became the source of much wealth to Holland and its industrious and enterprising people. Two hundred years after his death the Emperor Charles V. solemnly ate a herring on Benkel's tomb; it was a small homage paid to the memory of the creator of a new industry which had enriched his native land.

The Shad (Alosa), which have the body round and more plump than the herring, are still more distinguishable by the arrangement of their teeth. More than twenty species of this genus are known, varying considerably in size. They inhabit the seas which wash the coasts of Europe, Africa, India, and America. One species is the Common Shad, Alosa communis (Fig. 384), which is found in the Channel, the North Sea, and all round our coast. It is of a silvery tint generally, greenish on the back, with one or two black spots behind the gills. The shad approaches the mouths of rivers and great estuaries, and habitually ascends them in the spring for the purpose of depositing its ova, and is found at this season in the Rhine, the Seine, the Garonne, the Volga, the Elbe, and many of our own rivers. In some of the Irish rivers the masses of shad taken in the seine-net have been so great that no amount of exertion has been sufficient to land them. It sometimes attains a very considerable size, weighing as much as from four to six pounds. The shad taken at sea are less delicate in their flesh than those caught in fresh water. The habits of the shad are very imperfectly known. Two species are found on the British coast, namely, the Twaite Shad of Yarrell (Alosa finta), which is about fourteen inches in length, brownish-green on the back, inclining to blue in certain lights, the rest of the body silvery white, with five or six dusky spots on each side arranged longitudinally. The jaws are furnished with distinct teeth; the tail deeply forked.

The second species, the Common or Allice Shad (A. Communis), is considerably larger, sometimes attaining twelve and even fifteen inches in length, having only one spot on each side of the body near the head; the jaws without teeth, the scales small in proportion. This species is plentiful in the Severn, but rare in the Thames.