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THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



ceases, to eat. The millions that congregate together for spawning would, 

 doubtless, have some* difficulty in obtaining food in sufficient quantity, if they 

 required as much as before, but they evidently eat little or nothing at this 

 period. When in this fasting state the fish cures better than when gorged 

 with food. Those taken at the beginning of the season will not, when cured, 

 keep more than a week or two, and when the herrings find their way, gorged 

 with food into the narrow Norwegian fiords, the fishermen there interpose a 

 barrier of nets between them and the sea, thus compelling them to fast a few 

 days before taking them, so that they' may be in better condition for curing. 



In my former paper, I referred to herring abandoning localities that had 

 been over fished. Erom a leading article in the Standard, of the 14th Angust 

 last, I quote the following, " In brief, the jeremiads which used to fill the 

 Blue books, regarding the decay of the Herring fishing, have been proved 

 baseless. The depleted localities have turned out as rich as ever, and the 

 moderately good ones better than before." It is quite true that the herring 

 has returned to some of these depleted localities, but the conclusions of the 

 Standard implies that the statements as to the fish having abandoned them 

 were baseless. It is not so. Erom many well known fishing grounds, the 

 herring has disappeared for years, and that it is returning to some of them 

 again is easily accounted for. When a locality is over-fished, it is perhaps 

 scarcely stating the case correctly to say that the fish abandon it. In nature 

 the balance of life is only kept up when not interfered with. Fish are so 

 prolific that were they allowed to increase without check, one can scarcely 

 conceive what would happen, but in the case of the herring " the active com- 

 pany of whales, dolphins, porpoises, dog-fish, cod, gannets, cormorants, gulls, 

 and their thousand other enemies/' are the means provided by nature for 

 preventing their too great increase. When, in addition to these natural 

 checks, man captures the fish in thousands of millions it is no wonder that 

 their numbers are greatly diminished. It is not until they have become so 

 scarce, that the fishery ceases to pay, that much notice is taken of their de- 

 crease. Year after year only few are caught, but this few is perhaps as large 

 in proportion to the total number, as were the former hauls. At last, tired 

 of his unproductive fishing, it is announced that the fish have deserted the lo- 

 cality, and the fishing ceases. Their natural enemies are as destructive as ever, 

 and having better methods than man, they obtain herring w T hen man cannot. 

 But after a time the fish begin to increase, and ere long they are again so num- 

 erous as to make fishing " pay," and newspaper writers imagine its supposed 

 disappearance was a mistake. The Norwegian method of fishing has been al- 

 ready alluded to. The fish found their way into the narrow fiords, nets were 

 then stretched across the entrance, and all that had entered were captured. But 



