988 



SCANDINAVIAN KIStlES. 



Slinds tliis spot is tho only one left, wilh flio exception 

 of flutt on the slionlder. Nor is the l)l;ick colour of tlie 

 tij) of tlu' snout, tlie point .yf the lower jnw, ;in(l the 

 tongue constant. But the scale follicles of the whole 

 body as well as of the iiead are strewn, more densely 

 than in the Herring, with tine dots of brownish black; 

 and at the top of the dorsal tin this colour gathers in 

 a black spot, the hind margin of the cauthd tin being 

 also black. 



If we include, as we have reason to do, within the 

 limits of this species the North American Shad (and 

 perhaps the Skipjack, Cliipea chrysochlorift), the species 

 has an extensive range on both .sides of the Atlantic. 

 On the eastern side it occurs from the neighbourhood 

 of Trondhjcm" to the Mediterranean; on the western 

 side it lives somewdiat further south, being found from 

 the (lulf of St. Lawrence to St. John's River, Florida'. 

 In the Pacific it was unknown until the 2ncl of July, 

 1873. On that date Livingston-Stone, instructed by 

 the Fisiieries Commission of the United States, stocked 

 the Sacramento at Tahama (California) with ."55,000 

 Shad-fry from the Hudson Rivei', delivered to him on 

 the 2.5th of June from the Shad Hatchery of New York 

 State at Castleton. This proved one of the greatest 

 triumphs achieved by pisciculture; a productive Shad- 

 tishery ^\'as bestowed upon California. The enterprise 

 is also of general interest, as calculated to throw light 

 on the -wanderings of other iishes". We are told by 

 McDonald: "It is a common belief among fish-cultur- 

 ists that the ma.tui'e individuals of all anadromous spe- 

 cies, including the Shad, are led back to the waters in 

 which they were spawned by a conscious wish on their 

 part to return to those very localities in which they spent 

 their young life. Important e.xcej)tions to this rule are, 

 however, well established by recent ol)servations. For 

 instance, it is well established that the runs of Shad into 

 the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers are characterized 

 by alternations of abundance; that is to say, an exces- 

 sively large yield for any given season in the one in- 

 volves a corresponding diminution in the yield for the 

 same season in tiie other, thus precluding the possibility 

 of each individual returning annually to its native stream. 



Again, it was confidentlj- expected that all the vounw 

 Atlantic Shad which were transferred to and j)lanted in 

 the Sacramento River would, on their return from the 

 Pacific Ocean as mature tish, find their way back to 

 this stream. This was not. however, the case, for, to 

 the utter astonishment of man}- lish-culturists, a con- 

 siderable number of these now mature iish made their 

 appearance in many streams of the Pacific hing far 

 north of the Sacramento Rivci — streams to which Shad 

 had never lieen indigenous and in wliich none had ever 

 been ])lanted. These facts go a long way to disprove 

 the theory of instinct of locality, and indicate that the 

 river movements of the Shad are regulated l)y involun- 

 tary and extraneous influences. The migration and colo- 

 nisation of this fish northward along the Pacific coast 

 has been so general that at the present day ne^v genera- 

 tions of a single plant are found in every stream on 

 the Pacific from the Sacramento River to Puget Sound." 

 In Scandinavia the Shad may be considered as a 

 stranger. North of Germany it does not appear any- 

 where in numbers. But it is not rare. Se^-eral large 

 Allice Shads have been taken during the summer months, 

 according to Stokm, in Salmon-nets by the fishermen of 

 Trondhjem Fjord, and Collett states that an Allice Shad 

 was caught in the autumn of 1881 off Namsas (64\2°N. 

 lat.). The finia variety has not been observed so often 

 in Norwegian waters, and, according to Collett, only 

 in Christiania Fjord and near Bei'gen. In Denmark the 

 Shad is fairly common, but almost without exception in 

 the finta form. This vai-iety was frequently observed 

 by KnoYEii among the fish taken on the Danish coast 

 of the Cattegat, and he was told by fishermen that they 

 sometimes caught hundreds of Twaite Shads in Liira 

 Fjord. But onlv three Allice Shads, all taken during 

 Ma)' (1871 and 1878) in Liim Fjord, are mentioned by 

 WiXTiiER. <_)n the west ccjast of Sweden the case is 

 about the same. The Royal Museum has received from 

 Stromstad, through jMr. C. A. Hansson, two females of 

 the Allice Shad, one of them measuring about 44 cm., 

 the other 36 cm., and taken respectively at the begin- 

 ning of June, 1887 (the original of our coloured figure) 

 and the beginning of Se])tember, 1892. No other AlHce 



" Even on the coast of Iceland tlie Shad is found, acconling to a statement in Faber (Fisclie Islands, p. 182). The fishermen told 

 him that un the east coast of Iceland a kind of Hevriug was taken, similar to the common Herring, but with hlaek spots along the sides 

 They called it Ugiia-sild, i. e. Herring with eye-sliaped spots. 



*■ The Skipjack strictly belongs to the Mississippi Valley and the neighhouring parts of the Gulf of Mexico. It is uncertain whether 

 the true Shad is indigenous to the Alabama, where attempts to introduce it have been made since 1848. In the tributaries of the Mississippi, 

 above all in the Ohio, it has been planted by the U. S. Fisheries Commission. 



' Cf. above, on the migrations of the Salmon, pp. 858 — 859. 



