112 Extract from Report on the Acts relating to 
Extract from Report of the Royal Commission (consisting of 
Professor Lyon Puayrair, C.B., Professor Hux iey, and 
Lieut.-Colonel MaxwEL1) on the Operation of the Acts 
relating to Trawling for Herring on the Coasts of Scotland. 
Natural History of the Herring. 
Before proceeding to sum up our conclusions from the preceding 
inquiries, it will aid us to take a general survey of the natural 
history of the herring, so far as it relates to the practical questions 
now under consideration. 
The herring is found under four different conditions: 1st, Fry 
or Sil; 2d, Mates or Fat Herring; 3d, Full Herring; 4th, 
Shotten or Spent Herring. 
The first term is applicable to all herring which are not larger 
than sprats, or, in other words, are under five or six inches in 
length. The milt and roe in fish of this size are so small as to 
be discoverable only by careful dissection. 
The fry pass imperceptibly into Maties, which may have any 
length from six inches to thirteen, the last admeasurement being 
the extreme length of any British herring which has come under 
our notice. Internally, a matie is characterised by two peculiari- 
ties: the one being the great quantity of fat deposited about the 
alimentary canal; the other the small size of the roes or milts, 
which never quite fill the abdominal cavity, and, in herrings under 
ten inches, rarely exceed two or three inches in length, though 
they are always readily discernible. 
A Full herring is one in which the milt or the roe is fully 
developed, so as to occupy the whole of the abdominal cavity, 
except the small space filled by the intestine ; while the fat around 
the intestine has disappeared, having in all probability been 
applied to the nutrition of the reproductive organs. 
The smallest full herring which has come under our own ob- 
servation was a female, measuring 10,45 inches in extreme length, 
taken in Loch Fyne ; but we have been aeueee by very competent 
and trustworthy informants, that full herrings not more than seven 
or eight inches long have been taken at several points of the west 
coast of Scotland. The largest British full herring which we have 
had under our direct observation was 12,8; inches long; but Mr 
Gibson, Fishery Officer at Broadford, Skye, through whose hands 
immense numbers of herrings passed when he was in the employ- 
ment of the late Mr Methuen of Leith, assured us that it is by 
no means an unfrequent occurrence to find fish 14 or 15 inches 
long among the Orkney herrings, and that he once measured one 
which had attained the surprising length of 17 inches,* 
* Mr Methuen himself states that Iceland herrings are generally 17 inches long. 
