CHAPTER XI 



THE HERRING FAMILY 



The fishes belonging to the present family, including the 

 Herring, Sprat, Pilchard, Anchovy, and two Shads, are 

 the most important in our seas. Anatomically they have a 

 close connection with the salmon tribe, though they are widely 

 separated by some writers. 



The general characters of this family, of which our seas 

 possess only these six species, three of them in immense 

 shoals, are the moderately small, thin, silvery scales, which do 

 not extend to the head, small teeth, open gills, and absence of 

 spines in the fins. There are but one dorsal and one short 

 ventral. The herring has no lateral line — a fact that may be 

 borne in mind whenever there is a tendency to generalise 

 on the connection between that character and a habit of 

 swimming high in the water, for the herrings keep close to 

 the surface of the sea more uniformly than the fishes of any 

 other family in our seas. The lower edge of most of them 

 is flattened, covered with bony plates, and varyingly sharp 

 or serrated. 



The true herrings are all small, gregarious, shore-haunting 

 fishes of migratory habits. Dunn was of opinion that they 

 massed in such immense shoals for safety from rorquals and 

 other large enemies, which dare not venture among them for 

 fear of being suffocated. He once saw a rorqual nearly 

 suffocated in this way by coming up to breathe in the midst 

 of a shoal of herrings. The cetacean, in desperate straits, had 



