130 ACANTHOPTERYGII. — SCOMBRID^. ! 
appearance and disappearance on the various parts | 
of the coast of Europe. Thus Anderson, writing ' 
of the Mackerel, says that it passes the winter 1 . 
in the north; towards the spring it approaches ji 
Iceland, Scotland, and Ireland, and enters the |i 
Atlantic Ocean, whence one column passes along j 
the coast of Portugal and Spain, and enters the | i 
Mediterranean, while the other turns into the j J 
British Channel, and appears there in May, on 
the coasts of France and England ; and from 
thence passes in June along those of Holland and |i 
Friesland. This second column having reached | 
in July the coasts of Jutland, detaches a division, 
which, making the tour of that peninsula, enters i 
the Baltic Sea ; and the remainder, passing along I 
the coast of Norway, return to the north.” ; 
Facts, however, do not agree with these state- | 
ments ; the appearance of this fish in shoals I 
varies in the times of its occurrence, certainly, at j 
difierent points on the coast ; but does not at all |! 
follow the line of succession which a migration | 
would involve. Thus the Mackerel appears on I 
the Cornish shores often in March ; on the coasts I 
of Hampshire and Sussex, at the same time, and |i 
on the latter frequently in February ; while in | 
the bays of Devonshire, though an intermediate j 
locality, they are not plentiful till June. On the | 
French side of the channel, they appear later | 
about Havre and Dieppe than at Dunquerque; I 
which is the reverse of the order followed on our | 
own south-eastern coasts, for little is done in the | 
Mackerel fishery in Sufiblk and Norfolk before | 
the latter half of May, two or three months after | 
it has begun on the coast of Sussex and Kent. 1 
In Scotland their occurrence is considerably later | 
