SPECULATIONS ON THE SUBJECT. 577 



Though the reasons assigned by the learned and 

 others for the absence of the herrings from the Bohus 

 coast ai'e plausible enovigh, they are not altogether satis- 

 factory to my mind. One or more of the nuisances com- 

 plained of — such as casting the offal of the curing-houses 

 into the sea, and the noise in the Skargard— may not 

 improbably have deterred the fish from entering inlets 

 near to the shore, but they do not sufficiently account 

 for their altogether absenting themselves from the coast. 

 The cause for this, as it seems to me, must be sought 

 elsewhere. The Herring, as known, is a most capricious 

 fish, seldom remaining long in any one place. There is 

 scarcely a fishing station, indeed, around the British Isles 

 that has not experienced the great variation both as to 

 time and numbers in their visits, and that without any 

 assignable reason. Their present absence from the 

 coast of Bohus is rather owing, it seems to me, to some 

 hidden law of nature, of which we shall possibly be for 

 ever in ignorance, than to the causes alleged. Doctor 

 M'Culloch, one of our best authorities, takes a somewhat 

 similar view of the subject. He says : — " Ordinary 

 philosophy is never content unless it can find a solution 

 for everything, and is satisfied for this reason with ima- 

 ginary ones. Thus in Long Island, one of the Hebrides, 

 it was asserted the herrings had been driven away by the 

 manufacture of kelp, some imaginary coincidence having 

 been found between their disappearance and the establish- 

 ment of that business. But the kelp fire did not drive 

 them away from other shores, which they freqvient and 

 abandon without regard to this work. It has been a 

 still more favourite and popular fancy that they were 

 driven away by the firing of guns ; and hence this is not 

 allowed during the fishing season. A gun has scarcely 

 been fired on the Western Islands or on the west coast 

 since the days of Oliver Cromwell, yet they have changed 



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