344 LABRADOR 
and the roofs of their mouths, they feed by sieving the water 
through gill-rakers armed with teeth and fine spines, which 
catch the small copepods, etc., and gently guide them down 
their throats. 
They spawn in spring and autumn, but the same herring 
only spawns once a year, and they do not spawn till eighteen 
months old. The danger to the herring increases immensely 
when they come into the shallower waters for this or any 
purpose. It seems, therefore, another provision of nature 
that they should be a swift-swimming fish and, after spawn- 
ing, leave rapidly for deep water. 
Dr. Moses Harvey, the historian, writing in 1880, says 
the average export of herring from Labrador was 50,000 to 
70,000 barrels for the years immediately preceding. In 
1880, 20,000 barrels were exported; in 1881, 33,330 barrels; 
in 1908, only 180 barrels. As many as 500 barrels have 
been taken in one haul at Snug Harbour. Captain Hennesy 
described to me how, thirty years ago, he sailed through 
millions of herring north of Cape Mugford; their vast bulk 
made the surface of the sea oily. 
There are many superstitions about herring, and the 
reasons advanced for their not ‘coming in’ have been of 
every conceivable kind. Tochange this luck,some amusing 
ceremonial ‘‘charms” have been invented, such as dressing 
a fisherman in a striped shirt and riding him around the 
town in a wheelbarrow. Another valuable recipe was to 
pick out herring with red fins without letting them touch 
wood, and then pass them round and round the scudding 
pole as many times as the number of lasts of herring you 
hoped to capture next autumn. A “ last’? means 1320 her- 
rings. Less amusing was the burning alive, two centuries 
