THE HERRING FAMILY 203 



The capture of herrings for market purposes is conducted 

 almost entirely by drift-nets, and even for sport the herring is 

 little fished for with hook and line. There are, however, 

 times when it may be caught in numbers with a " jigger " on 

 the Scotch coast ; and Mr. C. A. Payton, H.B.M. Consul at 

 Calais, writes, under date February 17th, 1902, that immense 

 numbers of spent herrings came into Calais docks to recuperate 

 in January and February, and were caught in thousands by 

 amateurs using a local form of jigger. Mr. Payton himself 

 caught no fewer than 1,144 between January 25th and 

 February i6th. The proportion with either roe or milt would 

 not have been more than 6 per cent. 



The newly hatched herring measures rather over \ in., 

 and is more developed than the young of fishes hatched from 

 floating eggs. The eggs themselves are opaque, and have a 

 thick adhesive envelope. These larval herrings have no giU- 

 covers, and the mouth is immediately beneath the eyes and 

 opens downwards. Silvery scales first appear when the fish have 

 grown to a length of about if in., and the herring seems 

 to take in all rather over two years to reach maturity, which 

 would correspond to a length of between 7 and 9 in. 

 The female herring contains from 30,000 to 40,000 eggs. 

 Mcintosh and Masterman give a good figure of the larval 

 herring, showing the downward cleft of the mouth, which 

 changes its direction in the adult. The larval herrings live on 

 the bottom ; the post-larval forms at mid-water ; and when 

 about \ in. long the herring becomes a surface-swimming fish. 

 The larval pilchard and sprat, on the other hand, float with 

 plankton at the surface. According to Heincke * the larva of 

 the autumn herring differs from that of the spring race. 



On the subject of whitebait much has been written, and it 



* See that author's Naturgeschichte des Herings, a remarkable study of 

 spring and autumn herrings, in two volumes, with diagrams (Berlin, 

 1893). For a criticism of it see Jenkins in Lancashire Sea Fisheries Report, 

 1903, p. 28-38. 



