484 REGULATION OF THE HERRING-FISHERY. [CHAP. xi. 



this work shown how fish-roe is wasted, and at the risk of 

 censure for again repeating myself (I have already more than 

 once done so purposely), I must once more ask attention to 

 the millions of cod ova criminally wasted in the French 

 sardine-fishery. I am presuming, in making this allusion, that 

 cod are expressly caught with full roes for the purpose of 

 supplying this bait. The English fishermen can hit on the 

 sprat shoals without a ground-bait ; surely the French fisher- 

 men can do what we do. 



The regulation of the herring-fisheries (and the proper 

 protection of the herring) is surrounded with innumerable 

 difficulties, because of our scant knowledge of the natural 

 history of the animal. I have already, and more than once, in 

 the preceding pages of this work, alluded to the striking 

 incongruity of protecting one fish during its spawning time, 

 and yet making the same time in the life of another fish the 

 legal period for its capture. But a close-time for the herring, 

 from the fact of that fish breeding on some part of the coast all 

 the year round, although not impossible, will be difficult to 

 arrange. If, as is pretty certain, there be races of herring that 

 breed in every month of the year, would it be advisable to shut 

 up the fisheries ? and if, as some writers on the natural history 

 of the herring assert, that fish only collects into shoals at the 

 time it is called on to obey its procreative instinct, at what 

 other period of its existence could it be captured, even admitting 

 that at that time of its life it is least fitted to become the food of 

 mankind ? True, we have only gone on fishing for herrings in 

 a routine way at particular seasons of the year, and, were the 

 experiment tried, we might hit on the shoals at a more con- 

 genial time. The shoals of particular districts if, as I assume, 

 the herring is very local will have each their own spawning 

 time, and there might be a few weeks' close season then not 

 so much to save the taking of the gravid fish, as to allow them 

 a quiet interval, during which they might deposit their spawn. 



