Fishery Board for Scotland. 



xvii 



and in August they nearly reach maturity. Last autumn the Migration 

 majority of the herring seem to have left Loch Fyne in August to Herring^^ 

 spawn in the Sound of Kilbrannan during the months of September 

 and October. One or two shoals seem to have passed southwards 

 by way of the Sound of Bute towards the Ayrshire Coast. From 

 a comparison of the statistics given for the past twenty years of 

 the fish caught in Loch Fyne and in the Sound of Kilbrannan, it 

 will be seen that the latter district has almost entirely supplanted 

 Upper Loch Fyne as a spawning ground for the herring. 



The Loch Fyne fishermen have, for several years, been agitating 

 that the herring fishing on the South-west Coast should be placed 

 under certain legislative restrictions. Further investigations are 

 necessary ere the migration of the Loch Fyne herring can be made 

 out and the question of a further close time considered. 



During the year the following gentlemen took advantage of the 

 Tarbert laboratory : — Professor D' Arcy Thompson of University station. 

 College, Dundee; Sims Woodhead, Esq., M.D. of the University 

 of Edinburgh ; and James Murie, Esq., M.D. of the Linnsean Society, 

 London, who rendered valuable assistance in arranging and classi- 

 fying the material collected in Loch Fyne. During the winter the 

 laboratory has been under the charge of Mr Thomas Scott, who 

 has made a collection of the Crustacea, &c., which serve as food for 

 the herring and other useful fishes. 



In the Report for 1883 Professor Ewart called attention to the Varieties of 

 fact that the German Commission had arrived at the conclusion Hemng. 

 that the Baltic herring differed sufficiently from the North Sea 

 herring to be worthy of being considered a special variety. It has 

 long been held by fishermen and others that each district has its 

 own peculiar variety. From some 500 specimens examined in 

 1833 no evidence of the existence of such varieties was found. In 

 order to settle this question finally, Mr Duncan Matthews has been 

 examining for a considerable time samples of the herring captured 

 around the Scottish Coast. An important paper on this subject 

 will be found in the Appendix (page 61). 



The method of investigation adopted was to take accurate 

 measurements of the length of the head and of the caudal, dorsal, 

 and anal fins, to note the position of the fins on the body, &c., and by 

 a comparison of these data with the length of the body to ascertain 

 the amount of their actual variation, and especially whether these 

 variations were so constant in the herrings of any one or more 

 localities or seasons as to indicate a distinction of races. 



From this inquiry it seems that there are as large herring now as 

 there were some generations ago, and that although each district 

 yields large herring, the North-East Coast has a slight advantage 

 in this respect over the South-East and West Coasts. A table 

 giving the size, &c., of the largest fish examined includes repre- 

 sentatives from every fishery district, and shows that there is no 

 practical difference in size between the male and female, nor in 

 the numbers of each of these which were taken. 



The winter fish are found to be rather larger than those taken 

 in summer, while among the fish commercially termed 'maties,' 

 there are (1) immature herring, i.e., herring which, in addition to 

 being small in size, have undeveloped milts or roes; (2) small 



