6l2; 



NATURE 



\_April 2.Z, i88j. 



navian, and one on our own shores ; and how, having 

 achieved this spawning raid, the spent fish make their 

 way as fast as they can back to their Arctic refuge, there 

 to repair their exhausted frames in domestic security. 

 This story was started in the last century, and was 

 unfortunately adopted and disseminited by our country- 

 man Pennant. But there is not the least proof that 

 anything of the kind takes place, and the probabilities are 

 wholly against it. It is, for example, quite irreconcilable 

 with the face that herring are found in cods' stomachs 

 all the year round. And the circumstance to which I 

 have already adverted, that practised eyes distinguish 

 local breeds of herrings, though it docs not actually 

 negative the migration hypothesis, is very much against 

 it. The supposition that the herring spawn in the north 

 in the early spring, and in the south in the autumn, fitted 

 very well into the notion that the vanguard of the migrat- 

 ing body of herrings occupied the first spawning ground 

 it reached, and obliged the rest of the horde to pass on. 

 But, as a matter of fact, the northern herrings, like the 

 southern, have two spawning times ; or perhaps it would 

 be more correct to say that the spawning time extends 

 from autumn to spring, and has two maxima — one in 

 August- September, and one in February-March. 



Finally, there is no evidence that herrings are to be 

 met with in the extreme north of their range, at other 

 times, or in greater abundance, than they are to be found 

 elsewhere. 



In the matter of its migration, as in other respects, the 

 herring compares best with the salmon. The ordinary 

 habitation of both fishes is no doubt the moderately deep 

 portion of the sea. It is only as the breeding time 

 draws near that the herrings (not yet advanced beyond 

 the matie state) gather together towards the surface 

 and approach the land in great shoals for the purpose of 

 spawning in relatively or absolutely shallow water. In 

 the case of the herring of the Schlei we have almost the 

 connecting link between the exclusively marine ordinary 

 herring and the river ascendmg salmon. 



The records of the herring fisheries are, for the most 

 part, neither very ancient nor (with the exception of those 

 of the Scotch Fishery Board) very accurately kept ; and, 

 from the nature of the case, they can only tell us whether 

 the fish in any given year were readily taken or not, and 

 that may have very little to do with the actual strength 

 of the shoals. 



However, there is historical evidence that, long before 

 the time of Henry the First, Yarmouth was frequented by 

 herring fishers. This means that, for eight centuries, 

 herrings have been fished on the English coast, and I 

 cannot make out, taking one year with another, in I'ecent 

 times, that there has been any serious fluctuation in their 

 numbers. The number captured must have enormously 

 increased in the last two centuries, and yet there is no 

 sign of diminution of the shoals. 



In 1864, we had to listen to dolorous prophecies of 

 the coming exhaustion of the Scotch herring fisheries. 

 The fact that the returns showed no falling oft' was 

 ascribed to the improvement of the gear and methods 

 of fishing, and to the much greater distances to which 

 the fishermen extend their operations. Yet what has 

 really happened .'' The returns of subsequent years prove, 

 not only that the average cure of the decade 1869-7S was 

 considerably greater than that of the previous decade, but 

 that the years i S74 and 1 8S0 are absolutely without parallel 

 in the annals of the Scotch herring fishery, a million barrels 

 having been cured in the first of these years, and a million 

 and a half in 1880. In the decade 1859-6S, the average 

 was 670,000 barrels, and the highest 830,000. 



In dealing with questions of biology, a priori reason- 

 ing is somewhat risky, and if any one tells me "it stands 

 to reason" that such and su;h things must happen, I 

 generally find reason to doubt the safety of his standing. 



It is said that "it stands to reason" that destruction on 



such a prodigious scale as that effected by herring fishers 

 must tell on the supply. But again let us look at the facts. 

 It is said that 2,500,000,000, or thereabouts, of herrings 

 are every year taken out of the North Sea and the At- 

 lantic. Suppose we assume the number to be 3,000,000,000 

 so as to be quite safe. It is a large number undoubtedly, 

 but what does it come to? Not more than that of the 

 herrings which may be contained in one shoal, if it covers 

 half a dozen square miles — and shoals of much larger 

 size are on record. It is safe to say that, scattered 

 through the North Sea and the Atlantic, at one and the- 

 same time, there must be scores of shoals, any one of 

 which would go a long way towards supplying the whole 

 of man's consumption of herrings. I do not believe 

 that all the herring fleets taken together destroy 5 per 

 cent, of the total number of herrings in the sea in any 

 year, and I see no reason to swerve from the conviction 

 my colleagues and I expressed in our Report, that their 

 destructive operations are totally insignificant when com- 

 pared with those which, as a simple calculation shows, 

 must regularly and normally go on. 



Suppose that every mature female herring lays 10,000 

 eggs, that the fish are not interfered with by man, and 

 that their numbers rem tin approximately the same 

 year after year, it follows that 9998 of the progeny 

 of every female must be destroyed before they reach 

 maturity. For if more than two oat of the 10,000 escape 

 destruction, the number of herrings will be proportion- 

 ately increased. Or in other words, if the average strength 

 of the shoals which visit a given locality is to remain 

 the same year by year, mtny thousand times the number 

 contained in those shoals must be annually destroyed. 

 And how this enormous amount of destruction is effected 

 will be obvious to any one who considers the operations 

 of the fin-whales, the porpoises, the gannets, the gulls, 

 the codfish, and the dogfish, which accompany the 

 shoals and perenni illy feast upon them ; to say nothing 

 of the flat-fish, which prey upon the newly-deposited spawn ; 

 or of the mac'serel, and the innumerable smaller enemies 

 which devour the fry in all stages of their development. 

 It is no uncommon thing to find five or six — nay, even 

 ten or twelve — herrings in the stomach of a codfish,^ and, 

 in 1863, we calculated that the whole take of the great 

 Scotch herring fisheries islessthan the number of herrings 

 which would in all probability have been consumed by 

 the codfish captured in the same waters if they had been 

 left in the sea.- 



Man, in fict, is but one of a vast co-operative society of 

 hen-ing-catchers, and the larger the share he takes, the less 

 there is for the rest of the company. If man took none, 

 the other shareholders would have a larger dividend, and 

 w-ould thrive and multiply in proportion, but it would 

 come to pretty much the same thing to the herrings. 



As long as the records of history give us information, 

 herrings appear to have abounded on the east coast of the 

 British Islands, and there is nothing to show, so far as I 

 am aware, that, taking an average of years, they were 

 ever either more or less numerous than they are at present. 

 But in remarkable contrast with this constancy, the shoals 

 of herrings have elsewhere exhibited a change capri- 

 ciousness — visiting a given locality for many years in 

 great numbers, and then suddenly disappearing. Several' 

 well-marked examples of this fickleness are recorded on 

 the west coast of Scotland ; but the most remarkable is that 

 furnished by the fisheries of Bohiislan, a province which 

 lies on the sout'n-western shore of the Scandinavian 

 peninsula. Here a variety known as the "old" or 



' In his valuable Report on the Salt Wat^r Fisheries of Norway (1877), 

 Prjf. Sars e.xpresses the belief f at full-grown codfishes feed chiefly, if not 

 exclusively, on herrings. 



- In i879ralher more than 5,000,000 cod, ling, and hake, were taken hy 

 the Scottish fisher.nen. Allowing each only two herrings a day. these fishes 

 would have consumed mjre than three thousind five hundred million of her- 

 rings in a year. As to the Norwegian fisheries, 20,000,000 codfishes are 

 said to be taken annually by the Lofoden fishermen aljne. ■ 



