GREA T BRITAIN. 269 



re-examination. All are certainly the young of the 

 common herring. Yarrell remarked that these fish are 

 taken in the Thames " from the beginning of April to the 

 end of September . . . and specimens of the young fish of 

 the year, 4 or 5 inches long, are then not uncommon, 

 but mixed even at this late period of the season with others 

 of very small size, as though the roe had continued to be 

 deposited throughout the summer. Yet the parent fish are 

 not caught." I have now a fine series of whitebait captured 

 during the months referred to by Yarrell, and from the 

 same locality (the Thames), and these I now propose 

 enumerating, premising that, as the migrations of members 

 of the herring family are variable, occasionally forsaking 

 their usual spawning grounds, it does not appear impro- 

 bable that one species may have left and given place to 

 another, to be again changed to the original form on the 

 return of the water to some condition which suited its first 

 occupants. Thus Yarrell observes : " Formerly great quan- 

 tities of the Twaite shad were caught with nets in that part 

 of the Thames opposite Millbank, Westminster." 



I examined 138 examples of whitebait taken during the 

 months of May and June, 1878, the longest of which was 

 2-1 inches ; out of these about one in ten were sprats, the 

 remainder the young of the herring. In August I exa- 

 mined forty-six examples from 2 to 3^ inches in length ; 

 out of these twenty-four from 2 to 27 inches long were 

 sprats, and twenty-one, from 2 '8 to 3^ inches long, were 

 young herrings, these latter now commencing to grow to 

 a larger size than their smaller relatives, the sprats. In 

 October, out of forty-one examples from 2 to $ inches in 

 length, all were herrings. It appears that both sprats and 

 young herrings find their way into the London market as 



