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THE ICHTHYOLOGY OF NOVA SCOTIA— THE COMMON 

 HERRING. 



BY J. MATTHEW JONES, F.L.S. AND J. BERNARD GILPIN, M.D. 



Ichthyology has unfortunately "been a much neglected branch of 

 zoology, and while we have many works treating upon mammalogy, 

 ornithology, and entomology, there are comparatively few authors who 

 have touched upon the natural history of fish. Perhaps this may in 

 some measure be accounted for by the difficulties attending their study, 

 it falling to the lot of few to be situate in the vicinity of a fishing station ; 

 a matter of necessity, when, not only the habits, but the forms of 

 fishes, have to be carefully observed ; as a naturalist, even if placed in 

 the most eligible locality for procuring specimens, can never expect to 

 complete a perfect list of the several species frequenting that locality, 

 without the assistance of fishermen and others, who from daily experi- 

 ence can add so much valuable information, which it would be almost 

 impossible for one individual, by his own exertions, to become possessed 

 of. At the present day, however, the value of fish considered as an 

 article of food for the human race, attaches an importance to this branch 

 of science which is growing every year, and it is to be hoped that ere 

 long, the investigations of naturalists will afford some clue to the occur- 

 rence or absence at particular seasons, of those great annual gatherings 

 of fish, which appear on the coast of north-east America and Europe, 

 and which I would venture to suggest are more particularly influenced 

 by the paucity or abundance of the peculiar food preferred by each 

 genus, and the instinctive habit of searching for suitable positions for 

 spawning. 



An interesting fact in connection with the habits of fish is that of 

 the extremely local range of some species, shoals being observed in one 

 particular bay or inlet, while in those contiguous, and only distant a 

 short space, not a specimen of that species can be taken. On our own 

 shores here, this local habit in a more distant degree is well known ; 

 the shad, so abundant in the Bay of Fundy, is almost unknown to 

 our eastern coast from Cape Sable to Cape Breton, while looking 

 further north we find the mackerel, which is common on this coast 

 during the season, absent, in a great measure, from the waters of New- 

 foundland and Labrador. At the Cape of Good Hope, Dr. Pappe, an 

 observant naturalist, resident at Cape Town, states that several South 

 African fishes are possessed of similar habits, but more strictly confined 

 even to bays divided by a small promontory ; and in the Bermudas, 

 where you would imagine, from the small size of the group, that the 

 waters of the shores would be common to all, I find that some species 

 are only taken on the south side of the islands, and others on the north, 

 although these two positions are only divided from each other by a 



