204 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



or not, which will depend on stream and wind collecting their food ;) 

 but from the circumstance that there are many " summer-herring," or 

 young herring, no conclusion can be drawn as to the probable result of 

 the spring-herring fisheries. It is in reality only the " occurrence of 

 herring" which Mr. Sars has been able to promise his countrymen, and 

 of this there was no reason to doubt; but so far it is not within any- 

 body's power to predict " herring-fisheries," because we know not the 

 causes — at any rate, not the proper causes which can form the subject of 

 observations and calculations — of the periodical changes in the spawn- 

 ing-season and coming in of the herring, but only know from experience 

 that whenever these changes take place there is reason to fear that the 

 spring-herring for a number of years will not come to its old spawning- 

 places on the coast in order to spawn there, but stay farther out, as is 

 partly also the case with the Nordlands-herring, or the " great-herring." 



Mr. Sars, with regard to this, has raised the objection that the " sea- 

 herring" has been known long before 1861, but that it has not been 

 made an object of fishing, probably because formerly it did not come so 

 near the land as during the last years. The Lofoten fishermen took as 

 many of these fish as they used for their households by taking them out 

 of the sea in a very primitive manner — in buckets. Mr. Boeck quite 

 agrees with him in this point, but did not mean anything else than that 

 its "occurrence" before 1861 did not take place near the coast so that 

 it could have been fished with the common fishing-implements. Kegard- 

 ing the "great-herring," Mr. Boeck says, on this occasion, that it does 

 not differ from the spring-herring, but that its apparently different 

 shape is only caused by the greater amount of fat it contains, as on 

 approaching the coast it is not ready for spawning. Only at one place 

 did Boeck, toward the end of the fishery, in January, find " great-her- 

 ring" with loose roe and milt. As a general rule, it does not spawn 

 near the coast, but far out at sea, where large masses of herring have 

 every year been seen, both in this and the last century, from Hammers- 

 fest to Hitteren, from which cause a large number of young fish are 

 every year seen near the coast and in the fjords ; but in this century, 

 from some unknown reasons, they had not approached the coast so that 

 they could be caught, before 1SG1. As the great-herring, therefore, does 

 not approach the coast for the purpose of spawning, the great-herring 

 fisheries are always somewhat uncertain. As was said before, we do 

 not know the cause why this full-grown herring, which, however, is not 

 ready to spawn, approaches the coast in this manner; it is only sup- 

 posed that it has lost its way by following the large troughs of the sea 

 which lead to the coast. 



Although there remain several obscure " herring-problems," it is evi- 

 dent that, by Mr. Sars's report of 1872 and by Mr. Boeck's comments 

 upon it, made during the same year, we have advanced some steps in 

 understanding the connection between the various phenomena, partic- 

 ularly by proving tbat the summer-herring only represents different 



