THE COMMON HERRING. 505 



The Common Herring {Sill, Svv.; Sild, Norw. and Dan.; 

 Clitpea Hurengus, Linn.) -was, during the season, pretty 

 common in our Skargard, and elsewhere in the Scandi- 

 navian seas, both eastern and western. But on the several 

 coasts of the Peninsula it varies so greatly in form and size 

 (those on the north-west coast of Norway, called the 

 Grabens-Slll, the largest of the Scandinavian Herrings, 

 attaining fourteen or fifteen inches in length, or it may 

 be more, while the Stromminy, Avhich inhabit the Baltic, 

 and are the smallest, rarely exceed eight to nine inches) 

 as to cause many people to doubt their being one and 

 the same species. But naturalists tell us such is the 

 fact, and that the very great difference observable 

 amongst these fish is solely attributable to locality and 

 food, and to the greater or lesser saltness of the water 

 they inhabit. 



Formerly the idea was pretty generally entertained 

 that the great Polar Basin was the proper habitat of the 

 Herring, and that from thence annually issued, in like 

 manner as a swarm of bees from their hive, the immense 

 shoals that in the summer visit the western shores of 

 Europe, and which, when procreation is over, return again 

 to their icy home. But this notion, so far at least as 

 Scandinavia is concerned, is altogether exploded, the 

 prevalent idea now appearing to be that these fishes, 

 instead of being world-wide w^anderers, never travel far; 

 that those, for instance, which spawn on the shores of the 

 Baltic never leave that sea, and those which, for the same 

 purpose, visit the western coasts of the Peninsula, winter 

 either in the Cattegat or in the deeps of the North Sea. 

 And this view of the matter is streuofhened by the fact 

 that the Herrings on the several coasts, differing more or 

 less in appearance and size as they do, never intermingle, 

 each colony, so to say, having its own appointed station. 

 It is, moreover, the generally received opinion that these 



