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they call roe-aat, in their stomach. Herrings do 

 not all seem to spawn at the same time. The 

 stromling, or small spring herring of the Baltic, 

 appears arid spawns when the ice begins to melt, 

 and remains until the end of June ; then follows 

 a larger variety of summer herring ; and lastly, 

 towards the middle of September, the autumn 

 variety makes its appearance and deposits its 

 spawn. 



The herring leads a persecuted life : man wages 

 a perpetual war against it, not only assailing it 

 when it arrives upon his shores, but forming, like 

 the Dutch, large fleets to attack it on the open 

 sea. The whale too, is another enemy which 

 swallows myriads of them ; turning himself in 

 small circles, he not only receives vast numbers 

 within his gulf-like mouth, but others, which he 

 disables by the strokes of his mighty tail, he swal- 

 lows at his leisure. The gull, too, darts among 

 the shoal and devours many, while at the same 

 time, it unerringly points out to the fisherman 

 where to cast his nets, and thus aids in their de- 

 struction. Yet no species is so abundant as the 

 herring ; and with all the numbers that are the 

 natural prey of other animals, and the myriads 

 that man appropriates to his own use, we do not 

 find this abundance in the slightest degree dimin- 

 ished. Some opinion may be formed of the num- 

 bers that are destroyed by man when I state that 

 in the bay of Ranoe, in Norway, about eighty jagts 

 are annually taken. One hundred tons make a 

 j and each ton contains about twelve hundred 



