CHAP, xr.] FISH QUITE LOCAL. 483 



concerned, and grows to a great size in a short time. I need 

 not say any more on this part of my subject. If the man is a 

 benefactor to his country who makes two blades of grass grow 

 where only one grew before, what shall be said of the man 

 who introduces to us a new food-fish ? 



Were we better acquainted with the natural history offish, 

 it would be easy to regulate the fisheries. The everlasting 

 demand for sea-produce has caused the sea-fishing, like the 

 salmon-fishing, to be prosecuted at improper seasons, and fish 

 have been, indeed are daily, to a large extent, sold in a state 

 that renders them quite improper for human food. Another 

 cause of the constantly-lessening supplies may be also men- 

 tioned. Up till a recent period it was thought all fish were 

 migratory, and the reason usually assigned for unsuccessful 

 fishing was that the fish had removed to some other place ! 

 Thus the fact of a particular colony having been fished up 

 was in some degree hidden, chiefly from ignorance of the 

 habits of the animal. This migratory instinct, so far as our 

 principal sea-fish are concerned, is purely mythical. The re- 

 discovery of the Eockall cod-bank must tend to dissipate these 

 old-fashioned suppositions of our naturalists. All fish are 

 local, from the salmon to the sprat, and each kind has its own 

 abiding-place. The salmon keeps unfailingly to its own 

 stream, the oyster to its own bank, the lobster to its particular 

 rock, and the herring to its own bay. Fishermen are beginning 

 now to understand this, and can tell the locality to which a 

 particular fish belongs, from the marks upon it. A Tay salmon 

 differs from, a Tweed one, and Norway lobsters can be readily 

 distinguished from those brought from Orcadia. Then, again, 

 the fine haddocks caught in the bay of Dublin differ much 

 from those taken in the Firth of Forth, whilst Lochfyne herrings 

 and Caithness herrings have each distinct peculiarities. 



In regard to the enormous waste of spawn which I have 

 chronicled, what more can I say ? I have in various pages of 



