8 
THE BOOK OF FISHES 
Photograph from U. S. Bureau of Fisheries 
THE GENTLE ART OF TAGGING FISH 
Government scientists have been doing noteworthy work in investigating the life habits of migratory 
food fishes by taking thousands of them, placing identification tags on their tails, and then liberating them. 
Wet gloves are worn by the experts during the operations because dry hands remove the glutinous veil 
from the scales of the fishes and expose them to the attacks of many forms of parasites. 
male, and in that of the Herring, three 
females to every male. 
The perils fish have to face are innu¬ 
merable. Huxley estimates that only 5 
per cent of the Herring destroyed an¬ 
nually by all Herring enemies in the 
world find their fate at the hands of man. 
The other 95 per cent are the victims 
of whales, the porpoise family, seals, and 
other mammals; Cod, Haddock, Mack¬ 
erel, Sharks, and other fishes; gulls, gan- 
nets, and other birds; and the thousand 
and one other enemies that lurk in their 
wake at every stage, from the newly 
spawned egg to the adult fish. 
MANKIND, AN ASSOCIATION OF HERRING 
CATCHERS 
How tremendous this toll of the other- 
than-man enemies of the Herring actu¬ 
ally is may be gathered from the state¬ 
ment that man himself is credited with 
an annual catch of nearly eleven billion 
Herring. On that basis we must con¬ 
clude that over two hundred billion Her¬ 
ring annually fall victims to their enemies 
in the sea—enough to load a solid fish 
train reaching around the earth at the 
Equator. 
Huxley has called mankind an associa¬ 
tion of Herring catchers, and if those 
fish be counted that are caught by fish 
which feed on them and in turn feed us, 
he probably has not missed the mark much. 
He also reminds us that single schools 
covering half a dozen square miles may 
contain more than three billion Herring; 
yet many schools have been recorded that 
covered an area of 10 square miles. 
The migration of fishes forms one of 
the most fascinating romances of the sea. 
We have seen how the Shad, the Salmon, 
and other species spend their adult lives 
in the sea and seek fresh water in which 
to spawn; how others, such as the Eels, 
spend their lives in rivers and lakes and 
seek salt water at spawning time. 
The Mackerel and the Flying Fish fam¬ 
ilies wander wide from their usual haunts 
at spawning time. Other species follow 
the great schools of Menhaden about the 
seas, “a full dinner pail” being the first 
consideration in their lives as in ours. 
However, for the most part, keeping a 
