208 FISH CULTUKE. 



upon the spawn and fry to a great extent. It is 

 not a difficult thing to drive the herring away from 

 any locality, but who can bring them back again? 

 The splendid lochs on the western Scotch coast, 

 formerly teeming with fish, are now comparatively 

 tenantless ; and the herring the Highlander formerly 

 got for the mere trouble of taking it, he now imports 

 from Norway, and pays for in hard cash. I am not 

 here objecting to trawling in deep water, where it 

 can do no harm, but to trawling on the spawning- 

 grounds. 



It has been stated by able Ichthyologists that 

 sprats are not the young of the herring, some dif- 

 ference existing in the position of the fins, and the 

 belly of the one being serrated while the other is 

 smooth; but a writer of an article in the Cornhill 

 Magazine, some time since, stated that, from experi- 

 ments he had made, he found that this latter pecu- 

 liarity left the fish as it grew older, or towards 

 herringhood, and he asserted that the sprat was 

 neither more nor less than the herring-fry. I give 

 the statement as it stands, neither vouching for nor 

 denying it. Should it be true, the large numbers 

 of sprats which are sent into our markets would 

 very easily account for the great decrease which has 

 taken place in herrings. 



