288 THE HERRING. 



proceed one step beyond the fact that he actually 

 observes. 



Simply, then, the story cannot be true, because it is 

 impossible. The herrings do not come in myriads 

 from the polar sea, beginning their progress in January, 

 because there are no means of producing them there. 

 Spawn has not been found to animate in any place 

 except floating near the surface, or in shallow water, 

 where both the sun and the air act upon it ; and while 

 the polar seas and shores are open to such action, the 

 herrings are not there ; they are on our shores, the full- 

 grown and the young. But setting aside the impossi- 

 bility, the supposed emigration would be without an 

 object : they would not come for food, as they are 

 said to leave the north just when food would be found 

 there ; and if they are annually produced in the north, 

 they could not come to our shores for the purpose of 

 spawning, even though they are all obviously in prepa- 

 ration for such a purpose. Beside, there is no animal 

 that migrates southward m the spring ; and therefore 

 the theory would require one law for the rest of crea- 

 tion, and another for the herring; that the latter should 

 be chilled by the general warmth of the spring, and 

 warmed by the polar frost. Now, so far is the pro- 

 duction of fish from being independent of the influence 

 of heat, that, just as we would be led to infer from 

 the slow progress of the solar beams through the ele- 

 ment in which they live, they require the whole, or the 

 greater part of our summer, to mature the germs of 

 their countless broods. Nay, it appears that many, if 

 not most of the species, cannot mature their spawn 

 in the depths of the ocean to which they retire to 



