ADULT HERKINGS 175 



The writer in September 1909 found brown trout ranging 

 from 6 inches to IJ inch in length amongst a brood hatched 

 in the spring from a single batch of eggs under identical con- 

 ' ditions in India. He has no difficulty at all therefore in believing 

 that herrings of the same brood might easily exhibit similar 

 variations in a similar period. For eleven years he has doubted 

 whether the size of any kind of fish is fer se a reliable indication 

 of its age. 



The Comiiosition of tlie Herring Shoals 



Storrow considers that the summer feeding-shoals are made 

 up of young herrings which are born both in spring and in the 

 autumn ; he does not beHeve that spring spawners alw^ays pro- 

 duce fry which will inevitably themselves spaw^n in the spring, 

 or that the young of fish which have spaw^ned in the autumn 

 will inevitably spawn in the autumn. He can find, in fact, no 

 racial difference between spring and autumn spawners. As to 

 growth after the first year he shows that spring spawners are 

 no longer than autumn spawners at the end of the second year, 

 but by the end of the third year some of them have outgrown 

 the autumn fish, and this difference gets more and more marked 

 with age until in their fifth year spring fish grow better than 

 autumn fish in their sixth year. All this is apparently very 

 much in line with Hjort's views. If there really is a better 

 chance of long life for a herring born in the spring than for one 

 born in the autumn, what is the reason ? Until we know we 

 do not understand the life-history. 



Some General Conclusions 



Storrow shows that herrings may drift in the larval stage 

 from the north coast of Sutherland, and even from the north of 

 the Lewis, right along the east coast of Scotland into the North 

 Sea. These fish form feeding-shoals in the North Sea, 

 and some of them will join shoals of autumn-spawning 

 herrings, whose young will, in their turn, drift south as far as 

 the Wash, and form other shoals. Some young herrings from 

 the Wash, he thinks, may join the most northerly of the East 

 AngHan shoals. If all this is correct, there is a close family 

 relationship between all the herrings caught by British boats, 

 as fishermen always maintain. 



Storrow's main theme, how^ever, is * that the wealth of our 

 summer fishery depends upon the young fish, the predominant 

 year class of which has three rings, and that these young fish 

 arise from both spring- and autumn-spawning shoals. With the 



