FOOD OF THE HERKING. 51 



the herring, came to the conclusiou that they fed, " not 

 only on animalcula, minute fishes or aselli, minute Crus- 

 tacea, squillfe, and even on their own ova, but also, when 

 pressed for hunger, anything they meet with." " Abqui 

 ita mihi conspicua fuit haleces non tantum vesci exiguis 

 pisciculis atque etiam propriis ovis, sed et quocunque ob- 

 vium urgente necessitate versus stomachum demittere." 

 {Leuwenhoch, I. Epist. 97, pp. 52, 53, dated January 

 1696.) 



Otho Frederick Miiller, in his work published at Copen- 

 liagen and Leipsic in 1785, on Crustacea, describes the 

 Cyclops lo7ujicornis as having been found by Gueruer " in 

 sinu Drobactiorum," in the stomach of the herring. 



The roe-aat described as a red worm by some authors, 

 is stated in Sonnini's " Buflfon," to be one of the Crustacea, 

 the Astacus Jiarengum, already mentioned, which gives a 

 reddish colour to the stomach of the herring. (Sounini's 

 Buffoii, vol. Ixvii. X3. 15.) 



Fabricus, who wrote a work, " De Specie Insectarum," 

 in 1781, says of the same Astacus harengum, " Habitat in 

 oceano Norwegico copiosissime, harengum et gadaram 

 esca" (vol. i. p. 511), namely, that it is most abundant in 

 the Norwegian seas, and is eaten by the herring and cod ; 

 and he also describes another of the minute shrimps, 

 Gammarus, as existing in the Norwegian Sea, and that 

 it is " harengum cibus gratissimus," most agreeable food 

 to the herring (vol. i. p. 518). 



In an elaborate work prepared by a gentleman already 

 referred to, W. von Wright, chief of the Civil Department 

 at Stockholm, and published by order of the King of 

 Sweden in 1843, " On the Herring and the Causes of its 

 Scarcity on the Swedish Coasts," we find that he says, 

 " In all the herrings I opened, amounting to a very con- 



d2 



