FISHES. 
2G5 
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? 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 £S, 300, 000, 
per annum. 
The possibility 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 kiuds leave the deep 
water, and approach, in countless hosts, the shores, where 
they arc 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 fov food : let 
the spawn be once deposited, and the fish is worthless. 
What is more vile than “ a shotteu herring V' 
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 
