28 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



Loch Erebol, and Loch Glendhu-beg, when a herring of a dif- 

 ferent loch is found, amid a mass of their own, the fishermen 

 say, " Here is a stranger, let us see what loch he belongs to." 

 But we need not go farther than Lochfyne, the quality of whose 

 herrings is known to all. These herrings have uniformly re- 

 tained their character of superior excellence. Has this been 

 owing to the food ? No, for in the great shoal all the herrings 

 feed alike. Is it casual? Is the quality good one year and 

 bad another ? No, it is the same every year, as far as memory 

 can trace. This, then, could only happen in consequence of 

 the gregarious instinct which makes them cling to each other 

 and shoal in a separate division, or tribe, in the great mass, and 

 return to breed in their natal loch, without intermixture with 

 inferior tribes ; and, assuredly, these instincts were not infused 

 into the herrings of Lochfyne alone, but were engrafted in the 

 whole race. In some lochs the herrings are so large that 800 

 will fill a barrel ; in others it requires 1100, and in some 1500. 

 An experienced herring-fisher has remarked, " These distinct 

 sizes certainly formed one great shoal before they entered the 

 lochs, but must have gone in separate divisions or squadrons 

 from each other, otherwise how is it possible that the size of 

 herrings caught in each loch is found nearly equal, that is, 

 without there being a mixture of small among the great, or of 

 great among the small 2 " The reason is just the one we have 

 stated. There can be no other. Each loch gets its own her- 

 rings. The large breeds do not mix with the small, nor the 

 small with the large. If they did, the whole would be one 

 mongrel breed, instead of the distinct and wonderful varieties 

 with regard to quality, as well as to size and shape, which 

 exist, and which have existed from the beginning, and are con- 

 tinued and perpetuated by invariable and perfect instincts. 



Sir H. Davy has observed, w r ith reference to the instincts of 

 bees, that " the laws of a perfect, social community, as it were, 

 are adopted by beings that we are sure cannot reason. In the 

 hive-bee, for instance, the instinct of the workers leads them to 

 adopt and obey a queen ; and if she is taken from them, or 

 dies, they have the power of raising another from offspring in 

 the cells by an almost miraculous process : they work under 



