GEN. CLUPEA. THE HERRING. 161 



Gen. LXX. CLUPEA. Including the Herring, 

 Pilchard, Sprat, and Whitebait, this genus contains 

 several of the best known and most useful fishes 

 which our seas produce .. This is pre-eminently the 

 case with the first of these, namely 



(Sp. 139.) C. harengus. The Herring. But 

 although so familiarly known as an article of food, 

 we are very far from being well acquainted with 

 the natural history of this fish ; neither its migrations*, 

 kind of food, nor the causes which produce different 

 degrees of excellence in different localities, have 

 been investigated otherwise than in a comparatively 

 superficial and unsatisfactory manner. On the first 

 of these points, namely, the migrations of the Her- 

 irtg, the account given by Pennant and others of our 

 earlier naturalists, continued long to be received as 

 correct. He conceived that the great body rendez- 

 vous in the winter within the Arctic Circle, where 

 they continue for many months, in order to recruit 

 themselves with the abundance of food they find 

 there after the exhaustion of spawning; that this 

 mighty host (to which the application of the Ger- 

 man word Heer, an army, has furnished the com- 

 mon name, expressive of their numbers) puts itself 

 in motion southwards in the spring ; they begin to 

 appear off the Shetland Islands in April and May, 

 but the grand shoal does not appear till June. The 

 main body he describes as altering, on its approach, 

 the appearance of the very ocean. It is divided 

 into distinct columns of five or six miles in length, 

 and three or four in breadth, and they drive the 



