212 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
as soon as that essential object is effected, the shoals that haunt 
the superficial waters disappear, but individuals are found, and 
many are to be caught throughout the year. So far are they 
from being migratory to us from the north only, that they visit 
the west coast of Cork in August, arriving there much earlier 
than those which come down the Irish Channel, and long 
before their brethren make their appearance at places much 
farther north. Our common herring spawns towards the end of 
October, or the beginning of November, and it is for two or 
three months previous to this, when they assemble in immense 
numbers, that the fishing is carried on, which is of such great 
and national importance. “And here,” Mr. Couch observes, 
“we cannot but admire the economy of Divine Providence, by 
which this and several other species of fish are brought to the 
shores, within reach of man, at the time when they are in their 
highest perfection and best fitted to be his food.” The herring 
having spawned, retires to deep water, and the fishing ends for that 
season. While inhabiting the depths of the ocean, its food is 
said, by Dr. Knox, to consist principally of minute entomostra- 
ceous animals, but it is certainly less choice in its selection when 
near the shore. 
Although the common herring of our northern seas is beyond 
all doubt the most important of the tribe, yet there is no sea, no 
coast, where other species of the same family are not a source of 
abundance to man, and of astonishment by their vast numbers. 
Thus the enormous shoals of Pil- 
chards appearing along our south- 
western coasts are not less valuable 
. to the fishermen of Devon and 
Pilchard. Cornwall than the common herring 
to those of the North Sea. The 
older naturalists considered the pilchard, like the herring, as a 
visitor from a distant region, and they assigned to it also the 
same place of resort as that fish, with which indeed the pilchard 
has been sometimes confounded. To this it will be a sufficient 
reply, that the pilchard is never seen in the Northern Ocean, 
They frequent the French coasts, and are seen on those of Spain, 
but on neither in considerable numbers or with much regularity; 
so that few fishes confine themselves within such narrow bounds. 
On the coast of Cornwall they are found throughout all the 
