-82 AMERICAN FISHES. 



in the waters of British North America, and in 1880 nearly 43,000,000 

 pounds were obtained on the east coast of the United States. Summing 

 up the aggregate of these statements and estimates, and allowing to Ire- 

 land, Belgium, Germany and France, a product equal to that cited for 

 Scotland, we have an aggregate of 250,000,000 pounds. 



Commenting upon the supposed injurious effect of the fisheries upon the 

 abundance of this fish, Prof. Huxley in his well-known lecture upon the 

 Herring, delivered at the International Fishery Exhibition at Norwich in 

 1 88 1, remarked as follows : 



" It is said that 2,500,000,000, or thereabout, of Herrings are every 

 year taken out of the North Sea and the Atlantic. Suppose we assume the 

 number to be 3,000,000,000, so as to be quite safe. It is a large number, 

 undoubtedly, but Avhat does it come to? Not more than that of the Her- 

 rings which may be contained in one shoal, if it covers half a dozen square 

 miles, and shoals of much larger size are on record. It is safe to say that 

 scattered through the North Sea and the Atlantic, at one and the same 

 time, there must be scores of shoals, any one of which would go a long way 

 toward supplying the whole of man's consumption of Herrings.'" 



So well known was the Herring, from the earliest days, to the inhabi- 

 tants of Northern Europe and to their descendants who migrated to the 

 western shores of the Atlantic, that one name serves to designate the fish 

 in the languages of a majority of the peoples to whom it is known. . Its 

 name in English, German, and Dutch, though differently spelled, is 

 pronounced in exactly the same way. To the Scandinavians it is known 

 by the name " Sill." France in the name Clupee employs a form of the 

 Latin for fishes of this group by which the same fish is known to these 

 nations when described in the language of their men of science. There 

 are also local names to designate certain conditions and ages. To this 

 class belongs the name "Sperling," employed by our own fishermen of 

 Cape Ann to denote the young Herrings. Corresponding to this name 

 the word " Stromming " is used in Sweden. 



The Herring is found in the temperate and colder jxarts of the North 

 Atlantic. On the west, its range extends south to Sandy Hook, at the 

 entrance of New York Harbor, where it is found occasionally in mid- 

 winter, and on the north as far as Northern Labrador, diminishing in 

 numbers perhaps toward the northern extreme. On the east its southern 

 limit is in the vicinity of the Bay of Biscay, while northward it is found 

 in the White Sea and on the southern shores of Spitzbergen. It of course 



