Living Silver 



equally mysterious. And it struck Jan that if as much were known 

 about the cod or the halibut then they too might disappear into a 

 cloud of precise information. Only our ignorance made them 

 seem simple. 



Again, as always, Jan followed the advice of Agassiz and spent 

 hours in looking at the herring in order to learn something of its 

 anatomy and so deduce a little about its way of life. The colours 

 first, and the shape. But he knew all about such elementary mat- 

 ters. It was one of the few fish he remembered from Poland, salt 

 herring, the commonest of foods. The herring was so common. 

 It couldn't be extraordinary. Everybody knew about herring. A 

 red herring. A Bismark herring. Hampden. The King imposed a 

 further tax, known as ship money, that he might build up a fleet 

 for the protection of East Anglia fishermen from the depredations 

 of the Dutch. As a result, revolt bred in England and the king 

 was beheaded. But his purpose was fulfilled by his successors 

 Oliver Cromwell and Charles II who, between them, founded 

 British naval supremacy. 



Or perhaps it was only one of his more arrogant imaginations 

 that led him to believe he understood so much as the shape and 

 colour of the herring. For, indeed, its colours were the opposite 

 of common, a rich bright blue on its black and a glimmering silver 

 belly, a colour scheme very different from the sober blacks and 

 greens of the gadoids yet equally far removed from the garish 

 camouflage of the pleuronectids. It struck Jan that these colours 

 of the herring were the same as the colours of the sea, of the sea 

 as he had often watched it on a bright but stormy day, when the 

 deep blue of the water was being chopped into small white waves. 

 And that must be significant. Whereas the white fish, whether flat 

 or round, were hidden by their colour patterns when they lay on 

 the sea-floor or swam near it, the herring would be best camou- 

 flaged when it was moving freely in the upper waters. And the 

 shape, too, was like the shape of a salmon, almost like a mackerel 

 though not quite so streamlined, and these were fish that spent 

 most of their lives on the move - not slouching lazily like the 



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