40 Fish Culturul Association. 
wiews of Pleville:le Peley, ialready..quoted:. On the-contraagg 
he states explicitly: “The question of the annual and regu- 
lar appearance and disappearance of this fish is still un- 
solved.” He then \proceeds: toiteontrast.with:,M.) le Peleyie 
views of Duhamel de Monceau, Anderson, and others, who 
represented that the mackerel pass the winter in the northern 
seas, and in spring, beginning their migrations, pass South- 
ward, visiting first Iceland, then Jutland, then Scotland and 
Ireland and the coasts of Continental Europe, in autumn 
assembling together for a return to the polar regions. Then 
he quotes Pleville le Peley, and remarks: “This theory asso-. 
ciates the mackerel with many other sedentary fishes which 
pass the winter at the bottom of the :sea, stupefied by vthe 
cold into a kind of lethargy, and would seem to explain why 
in October young mackerel of ten and fifteen millimetres are 
taken, why in winter others of larger size are taken, not 
with a line, but with nets which entangle those which have 
not already buried themselves an) the’ mud «or the sandy 
Another quotation is madet from Shaw’s “General Zoology 
or Systematic Natural History,’ published 1803. Hind asserts 
“that the four disputed points in relation to the natural his- 
tory of this fish are there asserted, namely, its local habits, 
its torpidity during hybernation, the film over the eye, and ' 
the-fact of ‘its being partly embedded in ‘the soft mudijer 
sand during its winter sleep.” 
I admit that Shaw asserts the presence of a film over the 
eye. He does not, however, even give the theory of hyber- 
nation his personal indorsement, but, remarking that the 
long migration of the mackerel and herring seems at present 
fe, \sbe*icalled in question, ‘continues 4° It jis thought. mane 
* Nouveau Dictionnaire General des Peches, etc , Par H. de la Blanchere; Paris, 1868, p. 183. 
+ Hind, op. cit Part II., p. 10. 
