162 EGGS AND FEY OF THE HEEKING 



swallowed. At what stage this infiltration of food begins, the 

 writer does not know. It does not (presumably) apply to the 

 early stages before the gill-rakers are formed. Growth is not 

 very rapid. Fulton ^ tells us that a spring herring in the North 

 Sea is rarely more than 2 inches long at the end of the year in 

 which it was hatched, and most are much smaller ; at the same 

 period an autumn herring may be just over half an inch long, 

 and is rarely over If inch.- 



All througli the early stage the young herrings are gradually 

 moving upwards into higher layers of water, and somewhere 

 about the end of June the ' spring ' brood — then about an inch 

 long — reach the surface, and begin to wander shorewards. 

 They now begin to put on their silver scales, an attraction to 

 the enemies which prey upon them, as every one knows wiio has 

 watched summer shoals of mackerel hunting herring-fry inshore 

 at this stage. 



WJiitebait 



With the appearance of the scales the herring has assumed 

 the adult form. On its first journey shorewards it is caught as 

 * whitebait ', especially in the fine meshed seines at Leigh and 

 Southend, and apparently in the Medway. These seines are 

 used for whitebait from April to September, when the majority 

 of the fish are herring fry. The Thames whitebait in June, for 

 instance, consist of 90 per cent, of herrings. They are then, 

 according to Ewart and Matthews, ^ about six months old ; 

 measure about 2 to 2f inches ; and are probably the progeny 

 of fish spawning in the Channel in the winter. The winter 

 whitebait caught in the Thames ' stow-nets ' consist chiefly of 

 sprats. Mr. Andrew Scott found that the whitebait in the 

 Menai Strait consisted of a majority of herrings in March, and 

 on the 28th May nearly all were herrings measuring IJ to 2J 

 inches ; but by August all the whitebait consisted of young 

 sprats. Numbers of young herring, IJ inch to 2 inches long, 

 come inshore at Cullercoats every July and August. The de- 

 velopment after this stage is bound up with the question of 

 ' herring races ' and scale reading. 



' Twenty-fourth Ann. Rep. Fish Bd. Scot., Part 3, p. 293. 



* But see Mrs. Cowan's more recent investigations, below, p. 174 



8 Fourth Ann. Eep. S. F. B. 



