OSSEOUS FISHES. 
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characters. These herrings had the signal honour of being presented 
to the King of Norway, Frederick II. This superstitious prince 
turned pale at sight of this supposed prodigy. On the hack of these 
innocent inhabitants of the deep he saw certain cabalistic characters, 
which ho thought announced his death and that of his queen. Learned 
men were consulted. Their scieirce, as reported, enabled them to read 
distinctly words expressing the sentiment, “ Very soon you will cease 
to fish herrings, as well as other people.” Other savants were assem- 
bled who gave another explanation ; but in 1588 the king died, and 
the people were firmly convinced that the two herrings were celestial 
messengers charged to announce to the Norwegian people the ap- 
proaching end of the monarch. 
This fish abounds throughout the entire Northern Ocean in im- 
mense shoals, which are found in the bays of Greenland, Lapland, and 
round the whole coast of the British islands. Great shoals of them 
occupy the Gulfs of Sweden, of Norway, and of Denmark, the Baltic 
and the Zuyder Zee, in the Channel, and along the coast of France up 
to the Loire, beyond which they never appear to be found. 
The herrings are gregarious fishes, and live in great shoals closely 
packed together ; shoals to be counted not by thousands, but by millions 
and thousands of millions, in every shore and bay. It was the favourite 
theory, not very long ago, that herrings emigrated to and from the 
arctic regions. It was asserted, by the supporters of this theory, that 
in the inaccessible seas of high northern latitudes herrings existed in 
overwhelming numbers, an open sea within the arctic circle affording 
a safe and bounteous feeding-ground. At the proper season vast 
bodies gathered themselves together into one great army, which, in 
numbers exceeding the powers of imagination, departed for more 
southern regions. This great Seer, or army, was subdivided, by some 
instinct, as they reached the different shores, led, according to the 
ideas of fishermen, by herrings of more than ordinary size and sagacity, 
one division taking the w T est side of Britain, while another took the 
east side, the result being an adequate and well divided supply of 
herrings, which penetrated every bay and arm of the sea round our 
coast, from Wick to Yarmouth. Closer observation, however, shows 
that this theory has no existence in fact. Lacepede denies that those 
periodical jourueyings take place. Valenciennes also rejects them. It 
is true that the herrings have disappeared in certain neighbourhoods 
