THE SPRING RUNNING 9 



It is the spring running of the fish. For when the 

 great tidal waves of bird-life begin to roll north- 

 ward with the sun, a corresponding movement begins 

 among the denizens of the sea. The cold-blooded 

 fish feel the stirring; the spring running seizes them, 

 and in they come through the pathless wastes of the 

 ocean, waves of them, shoals of them, sturgeon, 

 shad, herring, like the waves and flocks of wild 

 geese, warblers, and swallows overhead, into the 

 brackish water of the bays and rivers and on (the 

 herring) into the fresh water of the ponds. 



To watch the herring come up Weymouth Back 

 River into Herring Run here near my home, as I do 

 every April, is to watch one of the most interesting, 

 most mysterious movements of all nature. It was 

 about a century ago that men of Weymouth brought 

 herring in barrels of water by ox-teams from Taun- 

 ton River and liberated them in the pond at the 

 head of Weymouth Back River. These fish laid their 

 eggs in the grassy margins of the pond that spring 

 and went out down the river to the sea. Later on, 

 the young fry, when large enough to care for them- 

 selves, found their way down the river and out to sea. 



And where did they go then ? and what did they 

 do? Who can tell? for who can read the dark book 

 of the sea? Yet this one thing we know they did, 

 for still they are doing it after all these hundred 

 years, they came back up the river, when they 

 were full-grown, up the river, up the run, up into 



