240 THE ICHTHYOLOGY OF NOVA SCOTIA, ETC. 



think, in about six. \ears they attain to what is called the large Digby 

 herrings. Their food is a small insect, just discernible with the naked 

 eye, which I think generally keeps near the surface of the water. 

 Their manner of taking them is by swimming along with their mouth 

 open, and catching them, and then emitting the water through their 

 gills. They are timorous ; thunder drives them into deep water. They 

 follow their prey close in shore in the night, but retire as soon as broad 

 daylight appears, and then return the next night, and so on. I have 

 heard them jumping and skipping about, till about half-an-hour before 

 the weir would show out of the water, and then retire just outside of 

 the weir, and there stay and feed awhile. When they go over the 

 weir, as before named, there would be some three feet of water over 

 the weir. I have seen them, just at night, come within about 300 

 feet of the weir, and stay there, not coming nearer that night, their 

 line would be in some places straight, and others crooked, just as our 

 weirs were shaped, though there were from six to eight feet of water 

 over the weirs. 



The export returns for the year 1861, give 190,000 bbls. of pickled, and 

 35,000 smoked herring, for the Province ; but the number sold as fresh, 

 in the market at Halifax, and those cured by the families living on the sea- 

 board, tor their own use, as well as those in the interior, who may be met 

 in strings of 20 or 30 waggons, returning laden with fresh or round fish, 

 as they are technically called, to be cured at home, would, at least, give 

 50,000 bbls. more. 



In this paper I have endeavoured to prove by facts seen myself, by 

 others gleaned from old and experienced fishermen, from the best 

 American writers — Dekay and Storer, — and from the very able report 

 of the late Moses Perley, Esq., that our common herring makes no 

 long migrations as those of the British Isles are said to ; that he passes 

 his winter either in our deep bays, ice-locked, or in deep sea soundings : 

 that the summer heats and smooth seas bring him to the surface and to 

 the land, in separate runs of different aged fish, caused by his spawning 

 in early spring and autumn. I say endeavoured to prove, for I am con- 

 scious that many of the facts need more proof and closer investigation, 

 and may turn out not facts after all. I have merely hinted at the 

 different existences of winter under deep pressure, half torpid, perhaps 

 beneath 70 fathoms, and his summer life on the surface — of the differ- 

 ent times "of spawning, as yet without reasons for so singular a fact, 

 modifying, as it must, the early life of the fry. I do not advance any 

 of these facts as new, but rather as newly put together ; and I have given 

 a slight sketch how, out at sea, he is waylaid by the fishermen, conducted 

 in shore and beset with drift and set nets, fir-tree stakes and pine brush 

 weirs, by a rural population intent on gathering their rich sea harvest to 

 their homes. 



