FISHES. 



265 



the pilchard — the Cornwall fisheries yield 21,000 hogs- 

 heads annually. What, then, must be the produce of all 

 the species above enumerated, all round the indented 

 coasts of Britain and Ireland 1 We have no sufficient 

 data to determine the commercial value of British fishe- 

 ries; but it has been loosely estimated by Mr M'Culloch 

 at £3,500,000 and by Sir John Barrow at £8,300,000, 

 per annum. / |tv£yt/ 



' The possibility t^of capturing fishes of any particular 

 species at any given time, with tolerable certainty, in such 

 numbers as to constitute a fishery, is dependent on certain 

 instincts and habits in such species, leading them to asso- 

 ciate in multitudes in particular localities at particular 

 seasons. The most prominent of these instincts is con- 

 nected with reproduction. It is essential to the hatching 

 of the spawn (or eggs) of most fishes, that it be deposited 

 in comparatively shallow water, within reach of the vivi- 

 fying influences of light and heat. Hence, as the season 

 of spawning draws nigh, the various kinds leave the deep 

 water, and approach, in countless hosts, the shores, where 

 they are readily seen and captured. And it is a most 

 beneficent ordination of God's providence, that,- at this 

 season, they are in the very best condition for food : let 

 the spawn be once deposited, and the fish is worthless. 

 What is more vile than " a shotten herring 1 ?" 



Any one who will look with curiosity at the " hard roe" 

 of a Yarmouth Bloater, may form a notion of the extent 

 to which fishes obey that primal law, " Be fruitful, and 

 multiply, and fill the waters in the seas" (Gen. i. 22); for 

 this hard roe is nothing else than the accumulation of 

 eggs in the ovary of a female fish : every seed-like grain 



