THE HEREING* 349; 



two vast bodies, one of which proceeds eastwards, 

 filling with their numbers the creeks and bays on 

 the east coasts of Britain, while the other passes 

 along the west, visiting the various lochs and bays 

 on that part of Scotland, the Irish Sea and the 

 Irish Coast. This, however, appears to be a fabu- 

 lous account. The herring does not possess its 

 habitual place of abode in the arctic seas, where it 

 is said to be extremely rare, and not only are there 

 no herring fisheries of any importance in Green- 

 land, or even in Iceland, but no notice has been 

 taken of this fish by voyagers to the frozen seas. 



That the herring. does perform a migration is of 

 course unquestionable, for it entirely disappears at 

 certain times and revisits our coasts afterwards; 

 but the extent of its migration is understood to 

 be very limited, and the best naturalists are of 

 opinion that it inhabits the deep water of our 

 coasts all the year, and only approaches to the 

 shallow water of the shores for the purpose of 

 reproduction, in this respect being similar to other 

 tribes of fishes. The opinion thus expressed is 

 corroborated by several circumstances. The her- 

 ring is known frequently to occur in great abun- 

 dance in some southern localities before its ap- 

 pearance in those more to the north, and this fact 

 is not consistent with the theory that they arrive 

 on the British coast from the arctic regions. And 

 the accuracy of opinion in question is rendered 

 still more probable by the circumstance that the 

 pilchard, a fish nearly allied to the herring, is 

 now known to reside permanently in the British 



