CAPRICES OF THE HERRING. 165 



periods for its full development. One says the fish is in 

 its prime in three years ; another delays maturity until 

 seven. Others, again, assert that it becomes reproductive 

 in two. All this is mere guess-work. What is certain 

 is, that different races are constantly coming to maturity, 

 and that some of these fish are engaged in spawning in 

 nearly every month of the year. It is when they are 

 thus engaged that they fall into the power of man. 

 When they are not spawning, or not assembling for the 

 purpose of spawning, they retire to places which the 

 naturalist knows not of. And then, to perplex us still 

 further, they are subject, as we have seen, to the most 

 extraordinary vagaries 1 They haunt a certain locality 

 year after year, and then suddenly take their leave of it 

 why, no man knows for a considerable period. Then 

 they return to it again, as capriciously as they had left 

 it ; or, in some few cases, they return to it no more. 



This strange fit of absenteeism was formerly attributed 

 to the mode of fishing, but it is now believed that there is 

 no more connection between the two than between Tenter- 

 den church-steeple and Goodwin Sands. " Trawling," 

 however, was long made the bugbear of the herring- 

 fishers. As we have described the operations connected 

 with it, we need say no more than that it is just the 

 same thing as " seineing," which has been pursued for 

 centuries on the Cornish coast without frightening away 

 the pilchards. It began in 1838, and in a few years 

 became very general ; for as a trawl-net can be had for 

 50, and a drift-net costs <250, the cheaper method 

 necessarily obtained the larger number of patrons. About 

 1846, when the herring grew scarce on the west coast of 

 Scotland, the "drifters" began to agitate against trawl- 



