168 WONDERS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 



where most regular, we will look at that fish, 

 which, in the imagination of our older writers, 

 is a wonderful traveller — we mean the herring. 

 In our younger days, with what interest did we 

 not trace the course of this fish from the Polar 

 regions to our shores ! But in science, if our 

 mind be open, truth either steals upon us by 

 degrees, or bursts upon us suddenly, making us 

 smile at our former ignorance. According to 

 Pennant, Anderson, and others, the great 

 winter rendezvous of the herring is within the 

 Arctic circle, where, as the former author (a 

 man of great- attainments) observes, they con- 

 tinue for many months, after the exhaustion of 

 the system consequent upon reproduction. He 

 adds, that the sea within that space, swarming 

 with insect-food in a far greater degree than in 

 our summer latitudes, is consequently attrac- 

 tive to the herring tribes. Thus, on the arrival 

 of spring, according to Pennant, " the mighty 

 army begins to put itself into motion," and 

 commences a southward course. We find, 

 however, in Pennant a little inconsistency ; for, 

 acknowledging that herrings continue on the 

 Welsh coast till February, that is throughout 

 the winter months, he tells us that the great 

 horde, turning back from winter-quarters, 

 begins to appear off the Shetland Islands in 

 April and May. " This," he continues, " is the 

 first check (land check) which the army meets 

 with on its march southward. Here it is 

 divided into two parts ; one wing of those 

 destined to visit our coast takes to the east, the 





