260 



Part III. — Twenty-fifth Annual Bepwt 



VI.— SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE FOOD OF THE HERRING. 

 By Thomas Scott, LL.D., F.L.S., Mem. Soc. Zuol. de France. 



The organisms which constitute the food of the herring — their various 

 kinds, their distribution, and their influence on the movements of the 

 fish — have for a long time engaged the attention of students of marine 

 natural history, and it is now many years since the Fishery Board for 

 Scotland commenced investigations into the nature of the food of the 

 herring and of various other problems connected with the herring 

 fisheries of Scotland. 



In 1885 an important paper on the food of the herring wa^ con- 

 tributed to the Fourth Annual Report of the Fishery Board for Scotland 

 by the late George Brook, F.LS., in collaboration with Mr W. L. 

 Calderwood, the present Inspector of Salmon Fisheries for Scotland. In 

 this paper the results of the examination of between fourteen and fifteen 

 hundred stomachs of herring containing food are given in detail in a 

 Table which fills eighteen pages of the Report. 



The stomachs had been received from various places all round Scot- 

 land, including the district of Berwick-on-Tweed, the Firths of Forth and 

 Tay, Aberdeen, the Moray Firth District, Loch Broom, "West Ross-shire, 

 and the Firth of Clyde, including Loch Fyne. All these stomachs were 

 such as contained food that could in most cases be identified. Many 

 other stomachs had been examined, but as they proved to be empty or 

 the food they contained was so disintegrated by the digestive fluids as to 

 be undistinguishable, they were by the authors excluded from the 

 paper in question. 



The observations which follow, and which may be considered as 

 supplementary to the paper by Brook and Calderwood, describe the 

 results obtained from the examination of fully five hundred herrings' 

 stomachs, selected from various fishing centres in Scotland. The Table 

 appended contains a summarised statement of the number of stomachs 

 and of the dates when they were examined, and also of the localities 

 from whence they were sent.* 



Table I. 



' [ desire to acknowledge th« assistance I have receiyed in this inquiry from my 

 colleague, Dr. H. C. Williamson. 



