8 
time, 35 to 40 mm., the metamorphosis takes place, at which time the scales 
begin to grow. This occurs about the end of June or the beginning of July. 
In six months the fish are about 6 cm. long and in a year 9 to 10 cm. During 
all of this period they live in immense schools along the shore and more par- 
ticularly around the wharves and floats, where they mix freely with sticklebacks, 
various species of young perch, sand launces and other small fish. Their staple 
diet, as in the case of the older fish, consists largely of copepods. These may 
make up the entire food supply and only occasionally does anything else pre- 
dominate. Here also the diet may be varied by the nauplius and cypris larve 
of barnacles, other crustacean larve, molluscan larve and eggs, ascidian larve, 
rotifers and peridinia. 
At much the same time as the mature herring leaves the shallow water for 
the deep, the yearlings do also. Nothing has been observed to indicate that they 
go out in the same schools. During the summer they are caught with hand 
lines in swiftly running water in some of the main passes between the islands, 
and in such cases they are not in very deep water. In the seine hauls made from 
September to March there are seldom any young fish. It might be supposed 
that they are small enough to pass through the meshes of the net leaving only 
the larger ones in the net, but this can scarcely be correct as there are exceptions 
to the general rule. One instance will illustrate. In November, 1914, the 
fishermen were working off Cowichan Gap (Porlier Pass) and all the catches 
lacked the usual uniformity. The fish were smaller than usual and consisted 
of fish of many different sizes. On November 27 Mr. H. McIndoo, Fisheries 
Overseer at Nanaimo, brought me in a pailful, taken without sorting, from one 
of the catches. The 79 fish brought in were of 50 different lengths, differing 
from 8.8 to 22.0cm. One was in the first year, 6 in the second, 47 in the third, 
15 in the fourth, 8 in the fifth and 2 in the sixth. From this it would seem that 
if the small fish were with the large ones on ordinary occasions they would be 
caught as they were in this case. Furthermore, on different occasions, I have 
watched a school of herring in continuous procession for hours pass a point and 
often for shorter periods without seeing any small fish among them. 
In their third year some of the herring spawn and these appear with the 
schools of older fish, but comparatively few, even at this age, are found in the 
seines. Probably much greater numbers spawn for the first time in their fourth 
year. If the immature fish keep separate from the mature fish it will be a 
difficult matter to find the time of the year at which the segregation takes place 
or what determines the segregation. The North Sea investigators have con- 
cluded that there is a time for such segregation among the Norwegian herring, 
hence further work along that line may establish some important facts concerning 
this mixing. 
Doubtless the immature fish wander in towards shore and out again as the 
mature fish do, but as they are small they are not observed readily. Whether 
the individual school retains its main components, making additions from year 
to year from the young fish to take the place of those that disappear or whether 
there is promiscuous mixing of schools may not be determined readily, although 
here again this seems to have been fairly well determined for the North Sea 
110 
