THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 165 



been removed? Is it too much to imagine that, for 

 such a host as he would then have presented, the 

 ample ocean itself would hardly have afforded room ? 

 Fanciful as the idea may seem to some, I know of no 

 better way of converting a sceptic to such an opinion 

 than to show him a school of herring on the march, 

 and ask him to try and assess their bulk and weight, 

 to say nothing of their numbers. Even spread as a 

 thin layer over several square miles of sea, they would 

 appal us with their profusion ; but when we remember 

 that these schools are many feet deep, and that just 

 the remotest corner of them impinging upon the nets 

 of a fleet of fishing-boats will suffice to load them all, 

 if the nets do not break, we get a faint idea of what is 

 meant by the wealth of the sea. 



As far as we are concerned in Britain, the prin- 

 cipal visitants among fish to our shores, for the purpose 

 of spawning, are herring, pilchards which are a species 

 of herring and mackerel. The former are the most 

 numerous, and are rightly accounted the most valu- 

 able, because as a food-fish they have really no rival, 

 whether fresh or cured. If only they were less plen- 

 tiful, they would be placed on an equality with the 

 lordly salmon, and would certainly, if scarce, be as 

 costly. But, fortunately, they are not, and their cheap- 

 ness and consequent accessibility by the very poorest 

 should never blind us to their super-eminent virtues. 

 With wonderful regularity they appear from the 

 remote depths, where they feed and grow fat on 

 who knows what incredibly abundant stores of their 

 special food for their long patrol of these shores in 

 order to deposit their ova. All through that long 

 inarch, although they furnish such abundant supplies 



