NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HERRING-QUESTION, ETC. 205 



stages in the life of the spring-herring; that it has no separate spawn- 

 ing-time; and that its movements are determined by its favorite food, 

 i. e., small crustaceans. Besides acknowledging the progress that 

 had been made, we thought that we owed it to the whole question, as 

 well as to the memory of Mr. Boeck, to save from oblivion what he had 

 written concerning it during the last days of his life, and which, on 

 account of its being contained in a daily journal, could only be accessi- 

 ble to a few, whose number would naturally decrease every day. Our 

 review of the state of the Norwegian herring-question at the end of the 

 year 1872 will at the same time serve as an introduction to a review of 

 the considerable progress which has been made by Mr. Sars's report for 

 1873, published in 1874, to which we will now turn. 



II. 



The above review of the discussion carried on in 1872 had long since 

 been written for insertion in tbis periodical, when we received Mr. 

 Sars's above-mentioned report for 1873, in which he gives in detail his 

 complete theory of the migrations of the Norwegian herring and the 

 causes which determine them. We likewise take the liberty to give, in 

 the following, a brief extract from this report. 



Mr. Sars does not believe that the grown spring-herring, after having 

 spawned on the western coast of South Norway, (from Ohristianssuud 

 to Stavanger,) goes out to the nearest deep water due west — i. e., between 

 the coast and the ridge in the bottom of the sea running parallel with it 

 from north to south, at a distance of from ten to fifteen miles — and stays 

 there near the bottom of the sea during three-fourths of the year when 

 it is not near the coast. This portion of the bottom, which, as Mr. Sars 

 has found by former observations, possesses but little animal life, and 

 must, comparatively speaking, be called a desert, is but little suited for 

 these enormous masses of fish, and there is no reason to suppose that 

 the herring is a bottom fish ; it is, on the contrary, in harmony with its 

 form as well as its favorite food — the small fat and oily crustaceans of 

 the surface — a fish which has its home near the surface of the water. 

 We do not deny that the Baltic, the Kattegat, perhaps, also, the Ska- 

 gerak, and the North Sea, have each their race of herrings, which do not 

 go beyond the basin of the sea which, by nature and habit, has been 

 assigned to them ; but the Norwegian spring-herring comes from a greater 

 distance, from the open sea between Iceland, Scotland, and Norway, not 

 from the bottom of this sea, but from its surface. Here it has lived, 

 especially during summer, very much scattered, on its favorite food, 

 which is there found in great quantities, (more or less near the surface, 

 according to the rising or sinking of this food, caused by the time of day 

 and the weather) ; and from here it approaches the Norwegian coast, in 

 a southeasterly direction, toward the beginning of the spawning-season, 

 gathering in large and constantly-increasing schools, and following the 

 deep troughs, till at last they are quite near the coast, and form a so-called 



