30 Fish Cultural Association. 
past, and a great deal of eloquence has been expended by 
Pennant and other writers in their history of herring and 
other species. For many years it was considered beyond 
question that the sea-herring, having their homes in the 
northern seas, were in the habit of prosecuting extensive 
journeys, in the course of which they successively visited the 
shores of Europe and America, penetrating into their bays 
and sounds, and returning afterward to the point from whith 
they started; the adults decimated by the predaceous fishes 
and their capture by man, but their numbers kept up by the 
progeny, the result of their spawning operations, for which 
purpose it was supposed their journeys were initiated. In 
the same manner the shad and the fresh-water herring of 
the American coast were supposed to start in the late winter 
along the ‘southern coast of the United States in a “hime 
column, the herring first, and afterward the shad, first enter- 
ing the St. John’s River in Florida, and while passing. up 
the coast sending off detachments into all the principal rivers, 
and finally stopping in about the latitude of the mouth of 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 
This theory is at present almost entirely abandoned, and 
there is; reason ‘to’ believe that after) the herring and sshad 
have spawned in the rivers, they proceed’'to ‘the .séa\~amd 
spend the period until the next anadromous movement in 
the ammediate vicinity of the ‘mouths of) the rivers;Awwbene 
they are followed in due course of time by their young. 
This is illustrated by the fact that fish of nearly every 
prominent river show some peculiarities by which both the 
fish-dealer and the naturalist can distinguish them; the dif- 
ference not being sufficient to constitute a specific rank, but 
such as to mark them as local races. Numerous captures, 
too, in gill-nets and otherwise, off the northern coast, during 
