CHAPTEH VI. 



THE FOOD OF THE HERKING. 



The usual food of the herring consists of the small medusae, 

 the Oniscus marhuis, small Crustacea, small fishes and other 

 food of various kinds, as will be detailed in the following 

 remarks on this subject. On some parts of the Norway 

 coast they eat a small Crustacea called the roe-aat {Asta- 

 cus), which, it is said, renders the fish not very suitable 

 for curing. Herrings very often leap at flies, and they 

 are frequently caught by hooks baited for the purpose of 

 catching other small fishes, and even by clear unbaited 

 hooks. A herring-curer of Banff told us that one season, 

 early in the month of June, he caught several herrings 

 having young sand-eels {Ammodytes tobianus) in their 

 stomachs ; and in one of them he found no less than forty- 

 two, from one to two inches in length. This was an early 

 period for herrings appearing in the Moray Firth, and the 

 milt and roe were of small size. A fisherman at Fraser- 

 burgh observed one year in August that the stomachs of 

 many of the herrings were full of young fishes, and found 

 seventy of them in one herring. On July 24th, we 

 examined the stomachs of several herrings caught off 

 Dunbar. Those which had the milt and roe small had 

 their stomachs filled with young sand-eels, about two 

 inches in length ; while, on the contrary, those in which 



