203 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
compare for utility with that of the Clupeide, or Herrings, 
small in size but great in importance. In mile-long shoals, 
often so thickly pressed that a spear cast into them would stand 
upright in the living stream, the common herring appears 
annually on the coasts of north-west- 
ern Europe, pouring out the horn 
of abundance into all the lochs, 
bays, coves, and fiords, from Norway 
to Ireland, and from Orcadia to Nor- 
mandy. Sea-birds without end keep thinning their ranks during 
Herring. 
the whole summer ; armies of rorquals, dolphins, seals, shell-fish, 
cods, and sharks devour them by millions, and yet so countless 
are their numbers, that whole nations live upon their spoils. 
As soon as the season of their approach appears, fleets of herring 
boats leave the northern ports, provided with drift-nets, about 
1200 feet long. The yarn is so thick that the wetted net sinks 
through its own weight, and need not be held down by stones 
attached to the lower edge, for it has been found that the 
herring is more easily caught in a slack net. The upper edge 
is suspended from the drift-rope by various shorter and smaller 
ropes, called buoy ropes, to which empty barrels are fastened, 
and the whole of the floating apparatus is attached by long 
ropes to the ship. Fishing takes place only during the night, 
for it is found that the fish strike the nets in much greater 
numbers when it is dark than while it is light. The darkest 
nights, therefore, and particularly those in which the surface of 
the water is ruffled by a fresh breeze, are considered the most 
favourable. To avoid collisions, each boat is furnished with one 
or two torches. From off the beach at Yarmouth, where often 
several thousand boats are fishing at the same time, these num- 
berless lights, passing to and fro in every direction, afford a most 
lively and brilliant spectacle. The meshes of the net are exactly 
calculated for the size of the herring, wide enough to receive tne 
head as far as behind the gill-cover, but not so narrow as to allow 
the pectoral fins to pass. Thus the poor fish, when once en- 
tangled, is unable to move backwards or forwards, and remains 
sticking in the net, like a bad logician on the horns of a dilemma, 
until the fisherman hauls it on board. In this manner a single 
net sometimes contains so vast a booty, that it requires all the 
authority of a Cuvier or a Valenciennes to make us believe the 
