Providential Habits 303 



Sprats were offered for sale as such, no one would be 

 found to purchase them at all. 



The habits of the Sprat as far as they can be known 

 are identical with those of the herring. Both feed 

 in their incalculable hosts in the deep water off our 

 coasts, affording in their turn food to a mighty army 

 of larger fish of many species. Then when the time 

 draws near for them to spawn they come shorewards, 

 drawing closer together until they appear like a solid 

 wall of fish many yards thick and hundreds of yards 

 long, all moving by one common impulse towards 

 whatever spawning ground they may happen to be 

 seeking. They have no leaders, and it passes the wit 

 of man to understand why they vary their spawning 

 places : whether it is the weather, the temperature 

 of the sea, or the quantity of food to be found which 

 actuates them. The amazing thing is that every 

 individual of the countless millions feels the same 

 impulse, obeys it at the ssmie moment, and needs no 

 other guide. 



For the sake of the humans who depend upon them, 

 it is a wonderfully valuable dispensation of Providence 

 which compels them to seek the surface and the com- 

 paratively shallow waters near the shore to spawn, 

 since otherwise it would be perfectly impossible to 

 catch them. No other means could be devised which 

 would be so effectual in garnering this rich harvest 

 of the sea as that universally employed and invented 

 in who knows what dim, far-off age of the world's 

 history. 



And yet the method is not, as might be supposed, 

 universally understood. Very briefly it is this : of 

 stout well-tarred twine a net is constructed about 

 twenty feet wide and in one hundred and twenty feet 

 lengths, making up for one boat about two hundred 



