P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY. 



427 



the population as follows among the great 

 families into which ethnologists have sepa- 

 rated the peoples: Negroes, 130,000,000; 

 Hamites, 20,000,000; Bantus, 13,000,000; 

 Foolahs, 8,000,000; Nubians, 1,500,000; 

 Hottentots, 50,000. This would give a total 

 population of 172,550,000. These figures 

 are, of course, only approximate, and both 

 German and English geographers think 

 them too low, the former estimating the 

 population at 200,000,000. 



Abont Herrings. — From statistics of the 

 Scottish herring-fisheries, furnished by a 

 writer in " Chambers's Journal," we may 

 get a partial idea of the enormous produc- 

 tiveness and abundance of that species of 

 fish. During a recent year the herrings 

 taken in Scottish waters and cured were 

 sufficient to fill one miUion barrels, each 

 barrel containing an average of seven hun- 

 dred fish. This quantity it must be ob- 

 served represents cured fish only, and only 

 those which are caught in Scotland under 

 the superintendence of the Fishery Board. 

 It is pretty certain that as many herrings 

 are captured and ofifered for sale as fresh 

 fish and " reds" as are cured for the mar- 

 kets in Scotland and oSered for sale as salt 

 herrings; which gives us the prodigious 

 total of fourteen hundred millions with- 

 drawn annually from the sea; and even 

 this number, vast as it is, does not include 

 what are used in the form of white-bait, or 

 those which are sold as sprats. 



After draining the sea to such an ex- 

 tent, it might almost be supposed that there 

 would be scarcely herrings enough left to 

 suffice for a breeding-stock; but the de- 

 mands of man are a mere fraction of what 

 are taken out of the shoals. All that are 

 captured, as well as all that are wasted 

 during the capture, and destroyed in the 

 process of curing, sink into insignificance 

 when compared with the vastness of the 

 quantities which are devoured by other en- 

 emies of the fish. Cod and ling are known 

 to prey extensively on the herring ; and a 

 calculation, based on the number of cod 

 and ling annually caught under the auspices 

 of the Scottish Board of Fisheries (three 

 million five hundred thousand were taken 

 in 1876), assumes that there is a capital 

 stock of these fish in the Scottish firths and 



seas of seventy million individuals ; and that 

 each individual consumes four hundred and 

 twenty herrings per annum, which at the 

 rate of two herrings every day for seven 

 months in the year, shows a consumption 

 of twenty-nine thousand four hundi-ed mil- 

 lion individual herrings. Nor does the ac- 

 count stop at this point. The commission- 

 ers who recently collected information on 

 the Scottish herring-fisheries, assume that in 

 Scotland alone the gannet (a sea-bird) will 

 annually draw on the shoals to the extent 

 of one thousand one hundred and ten mil- 

 lion herrings ! In addition to dog-fish, cod, 

 gannets, and other sea-birds, the herring 

 has many other enemies ; porpoises, seals, 

 coal-fish, and other predaceous fishes are 

 constantly lying in wait to fall upon and 

 devour them. A female herring, we know, 

 j yields over thirty thousand eggs; but at 

 I the shoaling-time myriads of those eggs are 

 ' devoured by a variety of enemies ; besides 

 [ which, hundreds of thousands of the eggs 

 ! are never touched by the fructifying milt of 

 the male fish, and so perish in the waters. 



j A Fabled Eastern City,— In a communi- 

 ! cation to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bom- 

 ; bay, M. C. Doughty gives an account of a 

 I visit to the so-called rock city of El-Hejjer, 

 which lies upon the Haj road in Aral)ia, at 

 twenty camel-journeys' distance from Da- 

 mascus, and about which many extravagant 

 stories are current among the Arabs. In 

 I the days of Ptolemy, who calls it Egra, the 

 place was an emporium on the trade-road 

 of gold and frankincense to Syria. Having 

 got there after great fatigue, Mr. Doughty 

 I found the fabled seven cities of the Arabs 

 i — said to be hewed in as many mountains — 

 to be about a hundred funereal chambers 

 j excavated in the sandstone rocks. The city 

 appears, by the traces remaining of founda- 

 j tions, to have been a cluster of four or five 

 palm villages in clay, each surrounded by a 

 wall in the ordinary Arab fashion. In their 

 interiors the funereal monuments are plain 

 sepulchral chambers with sunken tombs in 

 the floor and recesses, while in the walls 

 are shallow shelves of a man's length. In- 

 scriptions are seen handsomely engraved in 

 a panel above the doorways in many of the 

 monuments. Above these again, in the no- 

 bler monuments, there is very commonly 



