694 



HERRINGS 



HERSCHEL 



of artificially maintaining or increasing the supply 

 of hen-ings, because it has never yet been proved 

 that the supply has anywhere continuously dim- 

 inished in consequence of the enormous captures 

 which are annually made. The abundance of the 

 fish at a particular place varies capriciously from 

 year to year, and at different periods of time. On 

 the coast of Bohuslan, in the south of Sweden, 

 multitudes of herring have appeared within the 

 last few years after they had deserted that coast 

 for about seventy years. 



Herring-eggs were first hatched under observa- 

 tion by Prof. Allman, in Scotland, in 1862 ; the 

 eggs in this case were dredged from the bottom off 

 the isle of May. In 1874-78 the eggs were both 

 fertilised and hatched artificially by the German 

 Fishery Commission at Kiel. The development 

 has been described by Kupffer, in 1878, in the 

 annual report of the Kiel Commission. Artificial 

 hatching has also been carried out by the United 

 States Fish Commission. The eggs, when pressed 

 from the fish, are received on glass plates, to which 

 they adhere, .and are then developed in a current 

 of pure sea-water. The larva, when hatched, is 

 very slender and elongated : it is perfectly trans- 

 parent, and at once commences to lead a pelagic 

 existence in the surface waters of the sea. Herring- 

 spawn at the bottom of the sea is largely devoured 

 by flat-fish and haddocks, which are extremely fond 

 of it. 



Meyer, of the Kiel Commission, noted the growth 

 of the herring in captivity : when first hatched it is 

 th to ^d of an inch long ; one month after hatch- 

 ing it is fds of an inch ; at two months it is 1J 

 inch ; at three months about 2 inches. Then it 

 grows at the rate of about half an inch per month, so 

 that at six months it is about 3| inches, and at one 

 year 6J inches. Thus the herring is mature at 

 two years old, but not full-sized. The so-called 

 ' maties,' which are mature fish, and shed spawn 

 and milt, are probably the two-year-old fish spawn- 

 ing for the first time, while the full-grown herring 

 are three or four years old. 



For detailed information on the natural history of the 

 herring, see Nature (vol. xxvi. p. 607, and vol. xxix. p. 

 539 ) and the ' Jahresberichte ' of the Commission zur 

 Untersuchung der Deutschen Meere, which contain numer- 

 ous elaborate memoirs on the subject. See FISHERIES. 



Herrings, BATTLE OF. See FASTOLF. 



Herrnllllt. a small town in the kingdom of 

 Saxony, 18 miles SE. of Bautzen, celebrated as a 

 chief seat of the Moravians (q.v. ) or Herrnhuters, 

 who settled here in 1722. Pop. 1125. 



Herscliel, SIR WILLIAM, born at Hanover, 

 November 15, 1738, was the son of a band-master, 

 and was educated as a professional musician. He 

 first visited England as a member of the band of 

 the Hanoverian Guards ; but in 1757 he established 

 himself in England, becoming a teacher of music 

 in the town of Leeds, whence he went to Hali- 

 fax as organist, and subsequently (1766) in the 

 same capacity to Bath. Here he would seem to 

 have, first turned his attention to astronomy. 

 Wanting a superior telescope, and unable to 

 afford to buy a good reflector, he made one for 

 himself a Newtonian, of 5 feet focal length, and 

 with this applied himself to study the heavens. 

 In 1781 he made his first discovery, being a 

 new planet, which at first he took for a comet. 

 It was detected by an exhaustive process of 

 surveying the heavens, which Herscliel was the 

 first to follow, taking the stars in regular series, 

 and examining them all in their groups through the 

 same instrument. The result of his discovery was 

 his appointment to be private astronomer to George 

 III., with a salary of 200 (afterwards 250) a year. 

 He then went to live at Slough, near Windsor, 



where, assisted by his sister Caroline, he con- 

 tinued his researches. Herschel married a Mrs 

 Mary Pitt, and left one son, John. He was 

 knighted by George III., and made a D.C.L. by 

 the university of Oxford ; he became rich partly 

 through his wife's jointure, and partly through sell- 

 ing mirrors for reflecting telescopes. He died at 

 Slough, 25th August 1822. 



Herschel contributed sixty-nine papers to the 

 Philos. Trans, between the years 1780 and 1815 ; 

 and to the first vol. of Mem. of the Astron. Society 

 he contributed a paper ' On the Places of 145 New 

 Double Stars.' He greatly added to our knowledge 

 of the solar system : he discovered Uranus ( called 

 by him Georgium Sidus) and what he took for its 

 six satellites, and two satellites of Saturn. Besides 

 this he detected the rotation of Saturn's ring, the 

 period of rotation of Saturn itself and that of Venus, 

 the existence of the motions of binary stars, the 

 first revelation of systems besides our own. He 

 extended our knowledge of the Milky Way and the 

 constitution of nebulae, and, in fact, was the first to 

 give the human mind any conception of the immens- 

 ity of the universe. His catalogue of double stars, 

 nebulae, &c., and tables of the comparative bright- 

 ness of stars, and his researches in regard to light 

 and heat would of themselves entitle him to the 

 first rank as an astronomer and natural philosopher. 

 He erected a famous monster telescope of 40 feet 

 length. It was begun 1785, and finished 1789, in 

 which year he by means of it detected the sixth 

 satellite of Saturn. See Herschel's Life and Works, 

 by E. S. Holden ( New York, 1881 ). 



His sister, CAROLINE LUCRETIA, was born 16th 

 March 1750, and lived in Hanover till 1772, when 

 she came to England to live with her brother 

 at Bath. When William turned astronomer she 

 became his constant helper ; and on his being 

 appointed private astronomer to George III. she 

 acted as his assistant, doing all the duties of an 

 assistant-astronomer, and in that character re- 

 ceiving a small salary from the king. While dis- 

 charging her duties in this position she found time 

 for a series of independent observations with a 

 small Newtonian telescope, made for her by her 

 brother. Her special business was to sweep the 

 heavens for comets, eight of which she discovered, 

 in regard to five of which she has the credit 

 of priority of discovery ; and several remarkable 

 nebulae and clusters of stars included in William's 

 catalogues were described from her original obser- 

 vations. In 1798 she published, at the expense 

 of the Royal Society, A Catalogue of Stars taken 

 from Mr Flamsteed's Observations, which con- 

 tained 561 stars omitted in the British catalogue. 

 She lived with her brother during the whole of his 

 career, sharing his labours and distinctions, and on 

 his death returned to her native country. She was 

 then seventy-two years of age, but she lived to be 

 ninety-eight, retaining all her faculties to the last. 

 In 1828 the Astronomical Society conferred on her 

 their gold medal, and she was an honorary member 

 of the society. She died 9th January 1848. See 

 her Memoir and Correspondence, edited by Mrs 

 Herschel (1876). 



SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL, the 

 only son of Sir William, was born at Slough, 

 7th March 1792, and educated at Eton and St 

 John's, Cambridge, where, in 1813, he was senior 

 wrangler and first Smith's prizeman. His first pub- 

 lication was A Collection of Examples of the Appli- 

 cation of the Calculus of Finite Differences (1820). 

 In 1822 he applied himself especially to astronomy, 

 using his father's methods and instruments in 

 observing the heavens. For a time he worked with 

 Sir James South in re-examining the nebulae and 

 clusters of stars described in his father's catalogues. 

 The results of the re-exainination were given in 



