WHITEBAIT NOT YOUNG SHAD. 19 



answer to give than the young Scotch ploughman, who, being 

 asked how he knew that God had made him, replied, after some 

 little deliberation, that, "it was the common talk of the country," 

 In many places where whitebait are captured, fishermen believe 

 them to be young herring — " herrinsile " they are called on the 

 river Clyde ; and this idea has been ventilated by the author ia 

 the popular periodicals of the day — it is an idea too that has 

 long been common among our fishmongers. That whitebait are 

 young herriag, or sprats in an infantile stage, can be easily proved 

 — on paper at least ; and if our Government had a fish laboratory, 

 such as the French have at Goncameau, the fact might very 

 speedily be ocularly demonstrated. It is left, we suppose, for either 

 the Brighton or Crystal Palace Aquarium to determine what fish 

 the whitebait ultimately becomes, herring or sprat. There 

 has been a great amount of controversy as to the natural history 

 of the herring during late years, and so many curious facts 

 have been educed, that no one need be surprised to learn that 

 whitebait are truly the young of that fish. This may seem ex- 

 traordinary ; but without being, dogmatic, it may be permitted 

 us to say that the points of resemblance between herring and 

 whitebait are wonderfully numerous and convincing, as well in 

 the outward appearance as the anatomical structure of the 

 two fishes. At all events the young of the shad and the true 

 whitebait (at some places, such is the demand, that all sorts of 

 fry are "manufactured" into the latter fish, there being so 

 many who do not know one from the other) are very different 

 in many essential points as in the formula of the fin-rays and 

 the number of the vertebrae. Of course a young animal wiU 

 change greatly in appearance during growth. The whitebait, 

 for instance, in common with the sprat, has a serrated beUy ; 

 but if it be the young of the herring, it must grow out of that 

 serration. It is elsewhere argued that, in the case of the sprat, 

 the bones protruding from the abdomen are ultimately covered 

 by the growth of the animal, and so gradually disappear. 



Assuming " whitebait " to be young herring, we are entitled 

 to ask at what date the fish of that name, sold in London in 

 June and July, were spawned. The herrings at Wick, for 

 example, are taken fuU of spawn up tiU the end of the great 

 fishery in August; at what time, then, if whitebait be young 

 herring, would those we can now eat at BlaokwaU be spawned t 

 This, of course, involves a surmise as to the rate of growth of 

 the herring itself, upon which question there has from first to 



