AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 453 



have then placed a dog in the water at one end, and obserred 

 great uneasiness among the fish at the other end. Taste is proba- 

 bly the most weak of their senses, as they appear to swallow all 

 sorts of food with avidity. Still their flavor is influenced to a 

 great degree by the nature and quality of their food, and this is 

 the reason why the same fish vary so much in flavor on different 

 coasts. A few fish improve in firmness and flavor as they advance 

 in years, but generally speaking they grow coarse. Fish are inva- 

 riably in the best condition for the table while full of ova. After 

 depositing their spawn they grow thin, and become unwholesome; 

 the muscles appear bluish and transparent, owing to the extraor- 

 dinary muscular exhaustion which they necessarily undergo 

 during that interesting season. Fish surpass in fecundity all 

 other animals; there have been counted in the sturgeon one mil- 

 lion six hundred thousand ova; in the mackerel, one hundred 

 and twenty-nine thousand; in the carp, one hundred and sixty- 

 eight thousand; in the pike, one hundred and sixty-seven thou- 

 sand. 



The Herring {Clupea Harengus). — I have not been so successful 

 with this remarkable fish as with many others. They die the 

 moment they are taken from the water. The head and mouth 

 are compressed, the jaws unequal and short, the tongue rough 

 and short, teeth inverted, and gill covers contain generally four 

 plates. He is of an ash color on the back, and his sides are white 

 and silvery. This family of fish, as far as numbers are concerned, 

 exceeds all the rest of the fish in the ocean put together. They 

 penetrate to the Polar sea, inaccessible on many accounts to vora- 

 cious fish, and there breed and multiply beyond the computation 

 of man. It was supposed by Pennant, that if two herrings were 

 allowed to live, and increase in their characteristic style, and the 

 lives of their offspring spared for twenty-five years, their bodies 

 united would exceed the bulk of the world ten times. An army 

 of them, equaling in extent Italy, France and Spain, leave the 

 regions of the Pole in the spring. Early in June they surround 

 the Shetland Islands; next Scotland, Ireland and England; they 

 then cross the Atlantic to the coast of Georgia, from thence they 

 move east, and line the entire sea coast of North America, more 

 than three thousand miles in extent; and what is most remarka- 



