MB. CLEGHORN'S STATEMENT. 233 



it is found, and never migrates. 2. That distinct races of it 

 exist at different places. 3. That twenty-seven years ago the 

 extent of netting employed in the capture of the fish was much 

 less than what is now used, while the quantity of herrings 

 caught was, generally speaking, much greater. 4. There were 

 fishing stations extant some years ago which are now exhausted; 

 a steady increase having taken place in their produce up to a 

 certain point, then violent fluctuations, and then final extinc- 

 tion. 5. The races of herrings nearest our large cities have 

 disappeared first ; and in districts where the tides are rapid, as 

 among islands and in lochs, where the fishing grounds are 

 circumscribed, the fishings are precarious and brief; while on 

 the other hand, extensive seabords having slack tides, with 

 little accommodation for boats, are surer and of longer con- 

 tinuance as fishing stations. 6. From these premises it follows 

 that the extinction of districts, and the fluctuations in the 

 fisheries generally, are attributable to overfishing. In the 

 commercial portion of this chapter I shall again have occasion 

 to refer to Mr. Cleghorn's investigations on the subject of the 

 netting employed, but it occurred to me to state Mr. Cleghorn's 

 theory at this place, as it has been the key-note to much of 

 the recent discussion on the subject of the natural history of 

 the herring. 



Before the reading of Mr. Cleghorn's statistics, the natural 

 history of the herring was not well understood even by natu- 

 ralists ; so difficult is it to make observations in the labora- 

 tories of the sea. Only a few persons, till recently, were 

 intimate with the history of this fish, and knew that, instead 

 of being a migratory animal, as had been asserted by Ander- 

 son and Pennant, the herring was as local to particular coasts 

 as the salmon to particular rivers. 



The late Mr. J. M. Mitchell, the Belgian Consul at Leith 

 (who published a work on the National Importance of the 

 Hcrnny), in a paper which he read before the British Asso- 



