192 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



supposed to be asleep it is in constant motion, and its daily co urse, especially 

 whilst near the coast, is entirely regular. 



It is well known now that the herrings generally keep quiet during the 

 middle of the day and the middle of the night, but are in motion morn- 

 ings and evenings, and that they go into deeper waters by day-time and 

 near the surface by night. The herrings are, therefore, undoubtedly in- 

 fluenced by the changes of light, especially when the rays of light strike 

 the water in a very oblique direction at the rising and setting of the sun 

 or moon, which seems to waken the herrings to new life and cause them 

 to seek those depths which are best for fishing. The princijial changes 

 in the daily course of the herrings are doubtless caused by the varying 

 occurrence of the "herring-food" and by the herrings' desire to find 

 shelter from their enemies. 



It is also well known that the herrings go near the coast towards sun- 

 set and return to the deep about sunrise. According to Axel Boeck the 

 Norwegian spring-herrings during the spawning-season go to the spawn- 

 ing-places at nightfall and leave them in the morning, but towards the 

 close of the spawning-season they also come to the coast during the day, 

 so that the fishermen generally consider rich day-fisheries as an indica- 

 tion that the fisheries are approaching their close, a prediction which, 

 however, is not always fidfilled. G. C. Cederstrom says that in the Bal- 

 tic the autumn-herrings often go into the deep at night, and come nearer 

 the coast towards morning, but that the reverse may also occasionally 

 be the case. 



40. Regarding the annvaJ mif/miions of the herrings to and from the 

 coast, a number of dift'erent opinions have been advanced in course of 

 time. Some of these I have briefly hinted at when speaking of the 

 character of the herring as a littoral or pelagian fish (36). 



Older writers, and the fishermen themselves, seem not to have enter- 

 tained any other opinion than that the herrings coming from the ocean 

 approached the coast at certain times of the year, generally in a direc- 

 tion from north to south. The idea that the i)ro])er home of the herrings 

 might be the Polar Sea, near the ISTorth Pole, never entered the mind of 

 the older writers on the fishery-question, who knew that the herring- 

 whales keep farther south than the great whales of the ice-filled Polar 

 Sea; that these last-mentioned whales lived on entirely different food 

 than herrings, and that no herrings had been seen near Spitzbergeu, 

 or, as a general rule, farther north than the North Cape in Finmarken. 

 The herring-fishermen, with their limited geographical knowledge, were 

 scarcel^^ able to form or entertain a Polar-migration theory. 



The herring-fisheries on the coasts of Shetland, Scotland, and England 

 gradually go farther south in proportion as the spawning-season comes 

 later during the year. The English at the spawning-time generally fished 

 near the coast, and the Dutch had their principal herring-fisheries only in 

 the North Sea. Their knowledge of the herring was consequently limi ted 

 and led them to supj)ose that it was one and the same great school of 



