]62 3IALAC0P. ABDOM. HERRING FAMILY. 



water before them with a kind of rippUng. Some- 

 times they sink for ten or fifteen minutes, then rise? 

 again to the surface. The Shetland Isles form the 

 first check this horde receives, and divide it into 

 two parts ; one wing takes the west, the other the 

 east, and they fill every bay and creek, with their 

 numbers. The western division is again interrupted 

 by the north of Ireland, and again separates in a 

 similar manner. Some proceed southwards, passing 

 through the British Channel and visiting the coasts 

 of France. Pennant, at the same time, admits that 

 some old Herrings continue on our coasts the whole 

 year. 



Dr. M'Culloch, Mr. Yarrell, and others, disbelieve 

 *n this northern migration, from the circumstance of 

 the Herring never having been noticed as abound- 

 ing in the Arctic Ocean. Our Arctic voyagers and 

 whale fishers have taken no particular notice of 

 them, and there are no fisheries of any consequence 

 either in Greenland or Iceland. In the former it is 

 very rare.* They conceive that it inhabits the deep 

 water off our coasts all the year, and approaches 

 the shores at certain seasons for the deposition of its 

 spawn, in a manner analagous to what we see in so 

 many other fishes. This view they consider cor- 

 roborated, if not unquestionably proved, by the fre- 

 quent occurrence of Herring in abundance in many 

 southern localities before they have appeared in 

 more northern ones, a fact quite inconsistent with 



* " Hie piscis inter Groenlandise rarissimos numerandus 

 est," Fahricius, Favm,a Groenlandica, p. 1 82. 



