EGGS AND FEY OF THE HEEEING 157 



The Spawning Grounds 



In 1860 1 Dr. Boeck made certain experiments for the Nor- 

 wegian Government. He netted the channel between Eaago 

 and Faejo in Yordingborg Bay (Great Belt) with a hne of nets 

 stretching towards Hauskeskaer ; he also made another chain 

 of nets, which stood for the most part on rocks, with one end 

 reaching the channel. All the nets in the channel caught 

 many ripe herrings ; those on the rocks caught none, except 

 where they projected into the channel. With the dredge 

 he raised large lumps of herring ova attached to and mixed 

 with gravel. He concluded that in calm weather the herrings' 

 favourite spawning places w^ere ' large level places at the bottom 

 of the sea coverecl with rough gravel '. 



In 1803 Dr. Walker, of Edinburgh University, had also found 

 that the eggs were deposited on a gravelly bottom at about 

 10 to 12 fathoms. In 1862, Mitchell 2 relates, divers employed 

 by the Fishery Board for Scotland found herring-spawn to the 

 west of the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth at 15 fathoms at 

 the beginning of March — the bottom being stones, shells, sand, 

 and shingle. On the east side of the island spawn was found 

 on coarse shelly sand at 20 fathoms. The deposit was about 

 three-quarters of an inch thick, and attached to a cake of the 

 rough shells and sand. Three weeks later all the spawn had 

 disappeared from both of these spawning grounds. 



Mitchell says that ' after remaining on the coast for a certain 

 number of weeks, the herring deposits its spawn on hard clayey 

 or rocky ground, or gravel '. He tells us that Sauer had 

 observed the actual spawning process in the inner harbour of 

 St. Peter and St. Paul, Kamschatka. There, on the 7th June, 

 * the herrings made circles of about six feet in diameter, and in 

 the middle of the circle, at the bottom, another, no doubt the 

 female, was fixed.' The female first ejects the whole of the ova, 

 which is afterwards impregnated by the milt. 



Since Mitchell wrote, herring spawn has been obtained from 

 a gravelly bottom in the Firth of Clyde (Ballantrae Bank) in 

 rather shallow w^ater ; and Jenkins ^ has observed the Baltic 

 herring spawning in a few feet of brackish water in the river 

 Schlei, and attaching their eggs to the freshwater ' pond weed ' ! 

 The Japanese claim to have discovered that their herring, 

 which is the same species as ours, spawns, not at the bottom at 

 all, but among beds of seaweed along the shore. Meek, on 

 p. 71 of his book, gives a map which marks spawning grounds 



1 British Marine Food Fishes. ^ The Herring (1864), p. 341. 



3 Sea Fisheries, p. 97. 



