114 Extract from Report on the Acts relating to 
and insipid when cooked. They are distinguished from maties 
not only by this circumstance, but by the fact that the roe or milt, 
though greatly shrunken, may be restored to nearly the size of 
those of a full herring by inflating them with air, whereas the 
reproductive organs of a matie cannot be enlarged in any such 
manner. 
It is extremely difficult to obtain any satisfactory evidence as 
to the length of time which the herring requires to pass from the 
embryonic to the adult or full condition. Of the fishermen who 
gave any opinion on this subject, some considered that a herring 
takes three, and others that it requires seven years, to attain the 
full or spawning condition; others frankly admit that they knew 
nothing about the matter; and it was not difficult, by a little 
cross examination, to satisfy ourselves that they were all really 
in this condition, however strongly they might hold by their 
triennial or their septennial theories. Mr Yarrell and Mr 
Mitchell suppose, with more reason, that herring attain to full 
size and maturity in about eighteen months. 
It does not appear, however, that there is any good evidence 
against the supposition that the herring reaches its spawning con- 
dition in one year. There is much reason to believe that the 
eggs are hatched in, at most, from two to three weeks after de- 
position, and that in six or seven weeks more (that is, in, at most, 
ten. weeks from the time of laying the egg), the young have 
attained three inches in length. Now it has been ascertained that 
a young smolt may leave a river and return to it again ina couple 
of months, increased in bulk eight or ten fold; and as a herring 
lives on very much the same food as a smolt, it appears possible 
that it should increase in the same rapid ratio. Under these 
circumstances, nine months would be ample time for it to enlarge 
from 3 to 10 or 11 inches in length. It may be fairly argued, 
however, that it is not very safe to reason analogically from the 
rate of growth of one species of fish to that of another; and it 
may be well to leave the question, whether the herring attains its 
maturity in twelve, fifteen, or eighteen months, open, in the toler- 
ably firm assurance that the period last named is the maximum. 
Yarrell, Valenciennes, and all the best authorities upon the 
herring, agree that the account of the migrations of the herring 
from and to the seas within the Arctic circle, promulgated by 
Anderson and Tennant, is wholly devoid of evidence. The herring 
fry frequent the lochs and shallows of the sea upon the British 
coasts in shoals, sometimes by themselves, at other times mingled 
with sprats, feeding upon the minute crustacea which throng the 
waters, and gradually growing into maties. Whether they betake 
themselves into deeper water on assuming the latter condition, or 
merely pass from a gregarious into a solitary state, does not 
