Me 
Numerous writers, in Sweden and in all other North Sea countries, have taken part 
in the discussion concerning these races. It will be of no interest here to consider the 
earlier literature on the subject, as the characteristics laid down by the various writers 
differ in reality only slightly from those which the fishermen have been able to observe 
with their own methods of investigation. An important point in the discussion, both 
among fishermen and scientists, has been the question as to whether the herring were 
winter spawning or summer spawning. After long controversy as to whether the indi- 
vidual herrmg only spawned once a year, and in such case, only in winter or only in sum- 
mer, or whether each fish was able, for instance, to spawn once every eighteen months, 
the majority of opinions gradually centred about the followmg theory: All round 
the North Sea there exist a number of local varieties or races, which live close to the 
coast, in bays or fiords. These are winter spawning fish. The great shoals which form 
the object of the true North Sea herring fishery belong to a particular race of herring, 
Spawning in summer and autumn: these are the ocean herring of the North Sea. Of 
other oceanic varieties, the Iceland and Norwegian herring are the most important; 
these are, however, spring spawning, and differ widely from the true North Sea fish. 
In the earlier scientific literature on the subject we find several attempts at a sharper 
distinction between the races by means of measurements and figures. Thus Nrzsson 
has already attempted to calculate different physical dimensions in proportion to the 
total length for several races of herring, and to compare these proportions as between 
the different races. He calculates, in the case of the ocean herring (forma oceanica) 
that the longitudinal diameter of the eye amounts to 1/,,—*/s) of the total length (to 
base of tail fin) whereas the corresponding figures for the coast herring (Skjærgaardssild; 
forma taeniensis) are only */,;—*/16. 
This method of distinguishing between different races by measurement of the dimen- 
sions of the body has, as is generally known, played an especially important part in the 
study of the races of mankind (anthropometry) and the attempts which have been made 
to find some arithmetical expression of such minor racial peculiarities as lie at or beyond 
the limit of immediate visual perception, or are subject to so great a degree of variation 
that extensive observations are necessary im order to discover the average and charac- 
teristic for each separate race. 
It is to Hernexe*) that the credit is due for first applying to the study of the her- 
ring all those principles and methods which have gradually been discovered for the study 
of mankind. 
The term “race” (family or tribe) is taken by HEINCKE as meaning a number of indi- 
viduals living under the same external conditions, together propagating their kind, and 
standing therefore in more or less close relation to each other. The idea of a race is based 
upon that of an ideal type. All the separate individuals diverge from this type both 
as regards each single quality and also as to the combination, in each case, of all quali- 
ties appertaining to the type. The very idea of a type presupposes a certain degree of 
variation in the individuals and their qualities, the type being the average, or mean of 
all the different individual, varying qualities. 
*) See for instance HEINncKE: Naturgeschichte des Herings. Geschichte der Heringsforschung. 
Abhandlungen des deutschen Seefischerei Vereins. Band II. Berlin 1898. 
