MIGRATION AND DESTRUCTION OF HERRING. 31 



like packs of wolves ; the whale with wide gaping 

 mouth skims the sea and fills himself with the cream 

 of it. The shark, the salmon, and the cuttle-fish take 

 their bite, certainly no mean one. Frank Buckland 

 makes an interesting calculation of the loss inflicted 

 by the cod-fish and the ling below, and by the 

 gannet above. He says : " It is a very common 

 thing to find a cod-fish with six or seven large 

 herrings, of which not one has remained long enough 

 to be digested, in his stomach. If, in order to be 

 safe, we allow a cod-fish only 2 herrings per diem, 

 and let him feed on herrings for only seven months 

 in the year, then 2 herrings x 210 days = 420 herrings 

 as his allowance during that time. In round numbers, 

 3,500,000 cod, ling, and hake were taken in Scotland 

 alone in 1876. It would be a great exaggeration to 

 suppose that one cod was taken out of every twenty 

 in the sea ; but assuming that five per cent, of the cod 

 in the sea were actually caught, 70,000,000 cod, ling, 

 and hake must have existed off the coasts and islands 

 of Scotland. If, however, each of these 70,000,000 

 cod, ling, and hake consumed 420 herrings a year, they 

 must together have consumed 29,400,000,000 herrings, 

 or twelve times more than all the herrings caught by 

 Scotch, English, Irish, Dutch, French, and Norwegian 

 fishermen put together; and nearly thirty-seven 

 times as many herrings as are taken by Scotch fisher- 

 men alone." Following the same method of calcula- 

 tion, it is estimated that the gannets upon Ailsa 

 Craig number not less than 10,000, and that they 

 destroy 21,600,000 herrings per year; and on the 



