448 COMMON HERRING. Class IV. 



Power which originally impressed on this most 

 useful body of his creatures, the instinct that 

 directs and points out the course, that blesses 

 and enriches these islands, which causes them 

 at certain and invariable times to quit the vast 

 polar deeps, and offer themselves to our expect- 

 ing fleets. That benevolent Being has never, 

 from the earliest records, been once known to 

 withdraw this blessing ^from the whole, though 

 he often thinks proper to deny it to particulars ; 

 yet this partial failure (for which we see no na- 

 tural reason) should fill us with the most ex- 

 alted and grateful sense of his Providence, for 

 impressing so invariable and general an instinct 

 on these fishes towards a southward migration, 

 when the whole is to be benefited, and to with- 

 draw it only when a minute part is to suffer. 

 Spawning. This instinct was given them, that they might 

 remove for the sake of depositing their spawn in 

 warmer seas, that would mature and vivify it 

 more assuredly than those of the frigid zone. 

 It is not from defect of food that they set them- 

 selves in motion, for they come to us full of fat, 

 and on their return are almost universally ob- 

 served to be lean and miserable. What their 

 Food. food is near the pole, we are not yet informed ; 

 but in our seas they feed much on the Oniscus 

 marinus, a crustaceous insect, and sometimes 





