478 SUPPLEMENT ON 



It multiplies astonishingly ; sixty-eight thousand six hundred 

 and six eggs have been reckoned in a single female: accord- 

 ingly the herrings do not appear to diminish in number, not- 

 withstanding all the causes of destruction which are arrayed 

 against them. 



In their courses, the innumerable legions of herrings cover 

 an immense extent of the surface of the seas, and yet, how- 

 ever, proceed in perfect order : the largest, the strongest, or 

 the boldest, lead the van. Thousands of them are snatched 

 from their long and crowded ranks to supply food to the 

 cetacea, the squali, the other large fishes, and the sea-birds. 

 A great number still perish in the bays, into which they 

 precipitate themselves, crowd, and accumulate mutually 

 against the shallows and the shores, until they are suffocated 

 or crushed : numbers likewise fall into the net of the fisher- 

 man. In some inconsiderable creek on the Norwegian coast 

 more than twenty millions of herrings have been the product 

 of a single fishery. There are few years in which more than 

 four hundred millions are not taken in that country. Bloch 

 has calculated that the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of 

 Gothemburg, in Sweden, take annually more than seven hun- 

 dred millions of these fishes, and yet, nevertheless, this bears 

 no comparison to what are taken by the fishermen of Hol- 

 stein, of Mecklenburg, of Pomerania, of France, of Ireland, 

 Scotland, and England, of the United States, of Kamtschatka, 

 and above all, of Holland, where, instead of awaiting their 

 arrival on the coasts, the fishermen proceed to meet them in 

 the open sea in large fleets. They thus often proceed north- 

 wards as far as the Shetland Islands. 



We find nothing in the writings of the Greeks and Romans 

 which appears to indicate that these nations were acquainted 

 with the herring. The fishes of the Mediterranean must in 

 fact have been nearly the only species of the class which 



