262 FISHES 



the multitudes of Salmonidne which ascended the rivers of 

 Kamtchatka in the spawning season as so great that the banks 

 were covered for miles with heaps of dead and dying fish, which 

 were crowded out of the water or were exhausted by the pro- 

 cess of spawning. When the tile-fish was destroyed by some 

 change of current off the east coast of the United States it was 

 estimated that about 1,500,000,000 of the dead fish floated at 

 the surface of the sea. Probably the most abundant of all 

 fishes are the herrings in the North Atlantic and other species 

 of Clupea in the North Pacific ; in the year 1907 over 6,000,000 

 cwts. of herrings were landed in Scotland alone. The weight of 

 a single herring is from four to eight ounces ; if we take an aver- 

 age of three to a pound the above total weight would represent 

 about 2,016,000,000 herrings. The total number captured annu- 

 ally in the North Atlantic has been estimated to be 3,000,000,000, 

 and this is probably not a very large percentage of the number 

 in existence at a given time. Cod also occur in millions off 

 the shores of Norway and Newfoundland, and even among 

 Elasmobranchs the spiny dog-fish (Acanthias) occurs sometimes 

 in vast shoals which make drift-net fishing impossible. 



