They are strong, graceful, athletic fish, quite 

 the ideal fish type, well balanced and bewilder- 

 ingly bony. The herring's bones are his Sam- 

 son hair— they make his strength and agility 

 possible ; and besides that, they are vast protec- 

 tion against the frying-pan. 



When the herring are once possessed of the 

 notion that it is high time to get back to the 

 ancestral pond and there leave their eggs, they 

 are completely mastered by it. They are not to 

 be stopped nor turned aside. Like Mussulmans 

 toward Mecca they struggle on, until an impass- 

 able dam intervenes or the pond is reached. 

 They seem to feel neither hunger, fear, nor 

 fatigue, and, like the salmon of Columbia Eiver, 

 often arrive at their spawning-grounds so bat- 

 tered and bruised that they die of their wounds. 

 They become frantic when opposed. In Herring 

 Eua I have seen them rush at a dam four feet 

 high, over which tons of water were pouring, and, 

 by sheer force, rise over two feet in the perpen- 

 dicular fall before being carried back. They 

 would dart from the foam into the great sheet of 

 falling water, strike it like an arrow, rise straight 

 up through it, hang an instant in mid-fall, and 

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