io8 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly May 



The fishermen, however, know that the shallow waters 

 within two or three miles of our coast become, during the 

 second quarter of the year, not perhaps more thickly popu- 

 lated than they were in winter — for the cod and whiting, then 

 so plentiful within hail of the piers and beaches, are gone to 

 sea — but certainly occupied by other inhabitants. The little 

 brown sand-eels and their greener kinsmen, the launce, 

 which were buried all winter in the sandbanks of our south- 

 coast estuaries, once more teem in the warming waters, the 

 veterans and a younger generation together. The smaller 

 bass are on the move. Already in March they were caught 

 at dockheads west of Portland ; in April they find their way 

 farther east, while down in the west country larger bass 

 come along in their turn. 



There is not, perhaps, the same seasonal regularity with 

 the fishes that migrate under the seas as with the birds that 

 migrate over them. The punctuality with which the or- 

 nithologist is able to record the coming of the majority of 

 migrants in April, with a few forerunners in March and as 

 many stragglers in May, would be impossible to him who 

 watches for the coming and going of the fishes. It might 

 be thought — and it may be true — that conditions of weather 

 and temperature would be likely to vary from year to year 

 with a further-reaching influence on the journeyings in the 

 air than on those dark and secret movements beneath the 

 waters. It may be that the wandering fishes are inherently 

 more irregular in their arrangements. It may even be that 

 the yearly variations in the conditions affecting their itiner- 

 ary, the supply of food, the presence of formidable enemies, 

 or the strength of adverse or propitious tides and currents, 

 are more marked than we have hitherto had reason to sup- 

 pose. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that the fishes 

 of our seas neither come nor go with quite the mechanical 

 precision noted in the case of so many of our bird visitors. 



At the same time, there is some approach to uniformity of 

 movement year after year. The opening and closing days of 

 our salmon-rivers have, no doubt, been fixed with a proper 

 regard for the programme of that particular fish in each 

 district. If there were not, at any rate, a semblance of punc- 

 tuality in the movements of the shoals, our offshore herring 



