OSSEOUS EISHES. 
571 
that the fish made its appearance at the most unexpected times, and on 
some parts of the coast the shoals could only he met by one or two 
boats. Before the boats from the bays and fiords could take part in 
the fishery the herrings had deposited their spawn, and returned to the 
open sea. 
To prevent these disappointments, often repeated with great loss to 
the fishermen, the Norwegian government established, in 1857, a sub- 
marine electric cable, along the coast frequented by the herrings, of 
a hundred miles, with stations on shore at intervals conveniently 
placed for communicating with the villages inhabited by the fishermen. 
As soon as a shoal of herrings is known to be in the offing, and they 
can always be perceived at a considerable distance by the wave they 
raise, a telegraph is despatched along the coast, which makes known 
in each village the approach to the bay in which the herrings have 
established themselves. 
This important branch of industry has only assumed its real 
character since the fourteenth century, and its sudden and prodigious 
extension is due to the discovery of a simple Dutch fisherman, George 
Benkel who died in 1397. To this man Holland owes much of its 
wealth’ He discovered, in short, the art of curing the herring so as 
to preserve it for an indefinite time. From that moment the herring- 
fishery assumed an unexpected importance, and became the source of 
much wealth to Holland and its industrious and enterprising people. 
Two hundred years after his death the Emperor Charles Y . solemnly ate 
a herring on Benkel’s tomb ; it was a small homage paid to the memory 
of the creator of a new industry which had enriched his native land. 
The Shad (Alova), which have the body round and more plump 
than the herring, are still more distinguishable by the arrangement of 
their teeth. More than twenty species of this genus are known, varying 
considerably in size. They inhabit the seas which wash the coasts of 
Europe Africa, India, and America. One type is the Common Shad, 
Morn communis (Fig. 383), which is found in the Channel, the North 
Sea and all round our coast. It is of a silvery tint generally, greenish 
on the back, with one or two black spots behind the gills. The shad 
approaches the mouths of rivers and great estuaries, and habitually 
ascends them in the spring for the purpose of depositing its ova, and 
is found at this season in the Rhine, the Seme, the Garonne the 
Volga, the Elbe, and many of our own rivers. In some of the Irish 
