516 Dr KNOX on the Natural History of 



In the stomach of the herring, when in good condition (and this may be readily known 

 from their external appearance), the remains of hundreds of minute Entomostraca may 

 be found, and nothing else. All the internal organs seem purified and semitransparent, the 

 stomach contracted, and, though examined with the ordinary botanical microscope of natu- 

 ralists, appear empty, the inner surface being covered only with a thin coating of the usual 

 mucous substance, and spread over this a layer of a brownish coloured substance ; the 

 brown substance is composed of the testaceous cases, antennae, and feet of animals, none 

 of which animals altogether, when entire, exceeding the 7-12ths of a line. When the 

 herring takes to other food, as the fry of herring, &c. and which I suspect it does only 

 after being some time on the coast, the stomach becomes distended, as it were ; the whole of 

 the internal organs, although examined within three hours of being taken, are soft and 

 dirty ; they run almost instantly into putrescence, and in the very best prepared her- 

 ring, either as red or salted, the milt and roe, which is generally left, I observe to have 

 become more than half putrid ; and the herring itself, as an article of food, is really good 

 for nothing, and in truth is only used as food by the poor. The fishermen themselves 

 have an obscure notion that the herring is taken in different states, and they say that 

 those taken at the commencement of the season, at Caithness, &c. will scarcely salt, ow- 

 ing to their extreme richness. It is probable that these herring, if carefully prepared 

 and pickled, would bring a very high price. Persons accustomed to eat Lochfine and 

 Lochlong herrings will not eat any other kind ; and I will now predict that the quantity 

 of herring taken there, and which may have taken to the fry of their own species, will be 

 found in an inverse ratio to those taken in the Firth of Forth, although the entomos- 

 traca is to be got in or near the Firth of Forth, but in all probability in less abundance ; 

 or it may become scarce, from the quantity of herring congregated into a narrow space, 

 the herring having approached the shores of the Forth for the special purpose of spawn- 

 ing. 



The peculiar species of entomostraca which I have detected in the herring of our 

 coast, is difficult to determine ; they are invariably very much broke up. I consider them, 

 however, to approach very nearly the cyclops of M. Dumeril ; and it is sufficiently 

 striking to observe, that the vendace is feeding in the fresh water lake of Lochmaben on 

 a similar animal. MULLER also, in his work on the Entomostraca seu Insecta Testacea, 

 gives a drawing of an animal to which the detached portions found in the stomach of the 

 herring bear a strong resemblance. He describes it in the following terms : " Cyclops 

 longicornis, antennis linearibus longissimus cauda bifida ;" and to this he adds the fol- 

 lowing remarkable observation, which, if followed out, or rather preceded by extensive 

 scientific research, might have led him to a discovery of the real food of the herring. 

 " In mari Timmarchia alluenti reperit immortalis GUNNER, ego postea in sinu Drobac- 

 tiorum ac in ventriculo clypea conglomerates absque institute examine vidi." 



MULLER considered the rare entomostraca as being mostly the prey of Hydrae, &c. ; 

 and, from their abundance in fresh and salt water, he constantly reminds us that water 

 drinkers must be content often to swallow thousands of these animals at a draught. 



In the stomachs of the vendace sent me 14th December last (1832), I observe the 

 little animal of which this fish devours immense quantities, is not the same as the one he 

 lived exclusively on during the autumnal months. I subjoin a sketch of that found 14th 



