Class IV. COMMON HERRING. 445 



given of those fishes are common to such num- 

 bers of different species, as render it impossible 

 to say which they intended. 



Herrings are found from the highest northern 

 latitudes yet known, as low as the northern 

 coasts of France ; and, excepting one instance 

 brought by Dod* of a few being once taken in 

 the Bay of Tangier, are never found more 

 southerly. They are met with in vast shoals 

 on the coast of America, as low as Carolina. 

 In Chesapeak Bay is an annual inundation of 

 those fishes, which cover the shores in such 

 quantities as to become a nuisance, f We find 

 them again in the seas of Kamtschatka, and pos- 

 sibly they reach Japan ; for Kcempfer mentions, 

 in his account of the fishes of that country, 

 some that are congenerous. The great winter 

 rendezvous of the herring is within the Arctic 

 circle : there they continue for many months, in 

 order to recruit themselves after the fatigue of 

 spawning ; the seas within that space swarming 

 with insect food, in a degree far greater than in 

 our warmer latitudes. 



This mighty army begins to put itself in mo- Migra- 

 tion in the spring ; we distinguish this vast body 

 by that name, for the word herring is derived 



* Natural Hist, of the Herring, p. 27. 

 f Catesby Carol, ii. xxxiii. 



TIONS. 



