330 PEOSE HALIBUTICS. 



Much, but to little purpose, has been written about 

 the migrations of these fish : Pennant, who derives the 

 word herring from the German heer, a host,* (purposely, 

 it should seem, to put himself at its head, as leader,) 

 has pretended, with much more precision than accuracy, 

 to define their exact line of march. After wintering 

 under the Arctic ice, and fattening on an abundant sup- 

 ply of crustacean food, they pour forth, he asserts, every 

 spring, dividing iato two vast hordes, which, proceeding 

 southward, furnish abundant entertainment to the various 

 inhabitants of the seas through which they glide, and the 

 lands they coast. This mighty exodus and vast voyage 

 of herrings from the Arctic circle ^o our own shores, 

 thus confidently advanced by Pennant and Anderson, was 

 currently believed, till lately, by most naturalists, and 

 even the illustrious Cuvier gives credence to it; but 

 much, if not the whole, of these long, interesting, and 

 minutely described wanderings, are as imaginary as Sin- 

 bad's voyages, or the rambles of Gulliver ; herrings, in 

 short, like mackerel, lie generally at great depths, in- 

 deed, but near home, and come into shoal water at the 

 breeding season, for the purpose of casting their spawn 

 where the warmth and light of the sun exercise a quick- 

 eniag influence in hatching. What mainly countenances 



some white herrings found in vessels captured by the Cinque 

 Ports ; and in the same reign red herrings also are specified hy 

 name, so that both sorts of curing were practised before the great 

 Deuiekoon was born : probably he improved the process, and so 

 came in for more kCSos than was his due. The conversion of 

 ' white salt' into 'red herrings,' like most other great discoveries, 

 was, it seems, accidental. Washe, in his ' Lenten Stuffe,' says, 

 ' that a fisherman having hungup some herrings in smoke, which 

 were white as whalebone, found them, when he next looked, red 

 as lobsters.' 



* Moule derives it from ' hairang,' an old French word for a 

 troop or army. 



