NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HERRING-QUESTION, ETC. 207 



bays and fjords, drawing the schools of young herring — the so-called 

 " suiniuer-herring" — after them, and after awhile taking them out to sea 

 again when the current changes. In exceptional cases, schools of her- 

 ring remain in the deep fjords for a whole year and longer, and such 

 herrings will naturally assume a character of their own, so as to pass 

 for a special variety or coast-race. Although, as has been said before, 

 we know all the stages in the life of the herring near the coast of Nor- 

 way, and would, therefore, reasonably suppose that its whole youth, till 

 the period when it spawns for the first time, was spent near the coast, 

 Sars remarks expressly that, on the whole, the occurrence of the summer- 

 herring near the coast must be considered as altogether temporary. It 

 comes, like the older herring, (the spring-herring,) from the open sea, but 

 not from such a distance as this one. " Some time before the large masses 

 of summer-herring came to Espevaer, in 1873, the mackerel-fishers often 

 caught considerable quantities of large and fat summer-herrings in their 

 nets at a distance of from five to six miles from the coast, and schools 

 of large and small herrings could often be observed from the mackerel- 

 boats. Soon afterward the current, on account of a very sudden change 

 in the weather, turned with unusual violence toward the islands near 

 Espevaer, and carried with it enormous quantities of small crustaceans, 

 which were closely packed in all the neighboring bays and sounds ; then 

 the herrings began to come in from the sea, first the larger and then 

 the smaller ones." As during winter the small crustaceans are not 

 found near the coast in such large quantities, the migration of the young 

 herring toward the sea will, on the whole, be much less disturbed than 

 during summer, and there are no instances of the spring-herring having 

 returned to the coast to seek food after having spawned. As soon as 

 the herring has got farther away from the coast, cut in the open sea, it 

 will not be enticed so much toward the coast by the small crustaceans, 

 as the currents there are generally more regular than near the coast ; 

 consequently only young herring — at least the majority of them — which 

 have not yet got far enough from the coast, visit the coasts of Norway 

 during summer. Sars, however, does not consider it improbable that 

 among the large " merchants' herring" there may also be some which 

 formerly, as " spring-herring," have spawned near the coast. It is a 

 natural consequence of the temperature of the sea and the direction of 

 the current (which from Stat is chiefly northerly) that the distribution 

 of the young herring along the coast and its outward movement chiefly 

 take place in a northerly direction, and, as a consequence of this, the 

 summer-herring fisheries are generally richest along the Throndbjem 

 coast, although the spring-herring is not known to spawn anywhere out- 

 side that coast. The "fat-herring" caught along the coasts of Nord- 

 land and Finmarkeu bears the same relation to the Nordland "great- 

 herring" as the "summer-herring" does to the "spring-herring." 



Among the phenomena which have been brought to light by the 

 historic studies or the regularities and irregularities in the course and 



