110 REPORT CF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Boeck, and be determined to make it very thorough and extend it over 

 a great many localities. He soon arrived at another result, by using, 

 first, the accounts of the government inspectors ; and, secondly, the 

 very minute information regarding the fisheries which he bad collected 

 prior to 1852. By thus marking all the places where herring-fisheries 

 had been carried on, and by noting every year where the herring had 

 approached the coast, he found that there were so many exceptions to 

 these six-year periods, that in several places their number by far ex- 

 ceeded the rule ; and the same was the case in any period selected at 

 random from one to seven years. Boeck can, therefore, see no law of 

 nature in this, and thinks that the herring does not return to the places 

 from which it came with the same certainty as the salmon does. The 

 approach of the herring, in his opinion, depends on the three conditions 

 mentioued above, viz, the channels, the wind, and the temperature. The 

 age of the herring when it approaches the coast to spawn for the first 

 time, belongs to that line of investigations which Boeck has not been 

 able to complete. Nowhere, as yet, has this been accurately ascertained. 

 Some have maintained, but without being able to furnish proof, that 

 the age of the herring, when it spawns for the first time on the 

 coast, varies between one-half and seven years. Boeck is in doubt, 

 whether the herring when fully capable of spawning is exactly six years 

 of age; but he has likewise no means of establishing his own opinion 

 that it is only between three and four years old. He merely remarks 

 that too little attention has been given to the fact that the herring when 

 it spawns has by no means reached its full size, and he has found her- 

 ring eight inches long which contained roe and milk. 



Boeck also spoke of the so-called "signs? which in earlier times were 

 closely observed, but to which, at present, little importance is attached. 

 In those early days fishermen thought that all the phenomena which 

 they observed in the sky and the sea must necessarily have some con- 

 nection with their most important occupation; and we find that there 

 were autumn, winter, and spring signs. Some of these signs for the 

 autumn and winter consisted in the color of the sea, the redness of the 

 sky, the kind of lower animals with which the sea swarmed, and even 

 the roaring of the whales, and the rising of the salmon in the mountain- 

 streams. The well-kuown Norwegian clergyman, Be v. 0. Hertzberg, 

 has, in the "Budstilcken" (the Messenger) for 1821, written an essay on 

 this subject, entitled "0» the Spring-herring and the Signs of its Coming." 

 At present, however, people have lost all trust in most of these signs, 

 and rely only on appearances furnished by the whale, by certain birds, 

 and by the codfish, which, in many respects, furnish important tokens 

 of the herring's approach. When the time of the herring fishery is near, 

 different kinds of sea-gulls gather in larger numbers than usual ; but it 

 is not until the herring comes near the shore and near the surface of the 

 water that these birds can find food among them, and thereby indicate, 

 with greater accuracy, the locality of the fish. The case is different 



