Koundjish 



ring had spawned, where the herring eggs were lying, fertilised, 

 in clumps and clusters, forming a kind of animal rockery on the 

 sea bed, amazed Jan. He could think of nothing that would ac- 

 count for it, no sense organ in the haddock that could detect its 

 prey. They certainly couldn't see the eggs, for they assembled 

 from miles around. They couldn't smell them either, or touch 

 them. How then did hordes of the haddock assemble w ithin hours 

 of the herring spawning? Assemble in such vast numbers that 

 whole populations of herring eggs were decimated? They cer- 

 tainly did assemble, for they were caught on the herring grounds 

 almost as regularly as they were caught in their own spawning 

 areas. He never learned of a satisfactory explanation though he 

 later found that some scientists accounted for it, and for many 

 other marine journeys, by the theory of Random Movement. 



According to this theory it can be safely pre-supposed that a fish 

 like the haddock spends most of its time in prodding about for 

 food. Whenever it comes upon a suitable morsel, it stops to eat. 

 But, when it finds nothing edible, it continues swimming, goes on 

 prodding, searching. On barren ground it finds little food. It 

 therefore does not need to stop. It swims, wakefully, hopefully 

 perhaps, but still it swims. And, since swimming is motion, it 

 moves over barren ground much more quickly than over rich feed- 

 ing pastures. When the sea-bed is strewn with abundant food it 

 must stop repeatedly : it eats ; it hardly moves ; it has, what might 

 be called, a sit-down meal. If it is then assumed that all its move- 

 ments are random, that it goes north, south, east or west with 

 equal willingness, then it follows that each particular haddock lin- 

 gers longer over areas where food is plentifiil than those where 

 it is deficient. Thus, in an area of rich feeding surrounded by a 

 kind of sea desert where there is no occasion to stop and eat, had- 

 dock will tend to stay in the rich ground. It won't be anything 

 intentional. The haddock don't want to stay there. They still 

 move randomly but they don't move so often or so much. They 

 don't need to. There is enough food to keep them busy. And all 

 the time new haddock will be drifting in from the poor pastures 



79 



