238 RATE OF GROWTH OF SOME SEA FISHES. 



the sprat and whitebait fisheries, in relation to the conclusions sum- 

 marised above as to the rate of growth of herring in the Baltic. 

 These records were collected for an entirely different purpose, 

 namely, to ascertain the destruction of herring fry entailed by 

 the fisheries mentioned, but they afford valuable evidence on the 

 growth and distribution of young herring. The first of the papers 

 to which I refer is a Rejiort on the Sprat Fishing on the East Coast 

 of Scotland in the unnter of 1883-8 !•, by the late Mr. J. Duncan 

 Matthews, Second Annual Eeport of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 

 We find from this paper that in December, January, and February 

 samples were taken at random from the fish taken by the sprat 

 boats usinof " circle nets" in the Firth of Forth. Of 1671 fish ex- 

 amined in December, 12'8 per cent, were herrings 3|- to h\ inches 

 long, the percentage in the several samples ranging from 1*5 to 

 76*4. In January and February the percentage of herrings was 

 considerably smaller, and the size a little greater, namely, from 3^ 

 to 5| inches. Now there is a thoroughly investigated spawning 

 ground about the Isle of May at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, 

 where herrings spawn every year from the end of January to the 

 end of March, or even later. It is obvious that the size of the 

 largest of the young herrings just mentioned agrees exactly with 

 that of the Baltic spring herrings when one year old. But the 

 question arises, are not the smallest, 3^ inches, too small to be de- 

 rived from the spring spawning in the Firth of Forth ? If spawned 

 in March then in December they would be nine months old, and 

 the size of herring at nine months given by Meyer is 3*9 inches. 

 The agreement is, therefore, very close, and we may conclude that 

 the herring measured by Matthews were derived from the spawn 

 shed at the Isle of May in the previous spring. The autumn 

 spawning on the coast of Scotland takes place in August and Sep- 

 tember, and there is no great fishery at this time in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the Firth of Forth, Moreover, young herring 

 hatched in August would be less than 3 inches long in December. 



A similar examination with similar results was made of the sprat 

 fishing in the Firth of Tay. The samples were taken in every 

 month from November to February, from the fish captured by the 

 fixed bag-net, and the percentage of young herrings in the samples 

 varied from three to eighty. The herrings were between 3j and 

 5| inches in length. But we have no definite indication of spring 

 spawning at the mouth of the Tay. It is possible enough that the 

 young herring taken in the Tay were originally derived from the 

 same spawning beds as those in the Forth, namely, the ground 

 around the Isle of May. However, there is no doubt that herrings 

 spawn in spriug at various places along the east coast of Scotland, 



