NOT LIKE A WHALE! 179 



direct their course to the east, and others to the west. 

 After having moved about for a while, the different 

 shoals separate again and diffuse themselves among 

 the shores of the seas of Britain and Germany, reunite 

 afterwards, and finally disappear at the end of .several 

 months. It is not merely to withdraw from the pur- 

 suit of the large fishes which haunt the seas of the 

 north that the herrings advance in such shoals towards 

 the seas of England and Germany, it is also for the 

 purpose of gathering there the abundant food which 

 nature has prepared for them on these shores, which 

 swarm with worms and small fish, on which the her- 

 rings greedily feed, and on which they grow very fat. 

 They at the same time spawn there ; and it may be that 

 they forsake the seas of the north because they no 

 longer find in them food sufficient for their subsistence. 

 We may assuredly conjecture that in this respect her- 

 rings and other migratory fish resemble birds of passage. 

 The same instinct and the same necessities may deter- 

 mine the migrations of both ; and these migrations are 

 the means employed by the wisdom of nature for the 

 preservation of these species so individually numer- 

 ous." 



Now that we have traced the long-prevalent notion 

 of the herrings' annual procession from the north 

 pole, and succeeded, we think, in fathering it not on 

 Pennant but on Bonnet, let us examine wherein the 

 Genevese naturalist differs from the conclusions of 

 more recent inquirers. 



Few will question his hypothesis, that the migra- 

 tions of the herring are regulated by the same causes 

 which occasion the migrations of birds viz., the desire 

 of procuring food for themselves, and convenient rest- 

 ing-places for the propagation of their species. But as 

 to the tons of herring swallowed at a single gulp of a 

 whale, there are serious difficulties in the way of our 

 gulping that. In the first place, the true whale (Balcena 

 mysticetus) of the polar sea is know T n to feed on the 



