CLASS PISCES 



459 



but about ten species are of commercial value. The common 

 herring, Clupea harengus (Fig. 389), is " the most important of 

 the food-fishes in the Atlantic." (Jordan and Evermann.) 

 Herring swim about the North Atlantic in immense shoals, often 

 covering half a dozen square miles and containing as many as 

 three billion individuals. On the New England coast herring 

 are smoked, salted, pickled, packed as sardines, or serve as bait 

 for cod- fishing. 



Family SALMONID.E. - - The Whitefishes, Salmons, and Trouts. 

 Many of our most important food and game fishes belong to this 



FIG. 390. The whitefish, Coregonus clupeiformis. (From Jordan 



and Evermann.) 



family, such as the mountain trout, rainbow-trout, and steel- 

 head trout of the West, the lake-trout and common whitefish of 

 the Great Lakes, the brook trout of the East, the Atlantic salmon 

 of Europe and North America, and the quinnat or chinook 

 salmon, the blueback or sockeye salmon, and the silver or coho 

 salmon of the Pacific. These fishes are easily reared, and 

 millions of their eggs or young are distributed each year by the 

 United States Bureau of Fisheries (see Table XV). 



The common whitefish, Coregonus clupeiformis (Fig. 390), 

 occurs throughout the Great Lakes region. During the winter 

 it prefers deep water, but in the spring it migrates to the shallow 

 water to secure insect larvae which become abundant at that 



