3 82 
AMERICAN FISHES. 
in the waters of British North America, and in 1880 nearly 43,000,000 
pounds were obtained on the east coast of the United States. Summing 
up the aggregate of these statements and estimates, and allowing to Ire¬ 
land, Belgium, Germany and France, a product equal to that cited for 
Scotland, we have an aggregate of 250,000,000 pounds. 
Commenting upon the supposed injurious effect of the fisheries upon the 
abundance of this fish, Prof. Huxley in his well-known lecture upon the 
Herring, delivered at the International Fishery Exhibition at Norwich in 
1881, remarked as follows : 
“ It is said that 2,500,000,000, or thereabout, of Herrings are every 
year taken out of the North Sea and the Atlantic. Suppose we assume the 
number to be 3,000,000,000, so as to be quite safe. It is a large number, 
undoubtedly, but what does it come to? Not more than that of the Her¬ 
rings which may be contained in one shoal, if it covers half a dozen square 
miles, and shoals of much larger size are on record. It is safe to say that 
scattered through the North Sea and the Atlantic, at one and the same 
time, there must be scores of shoals, any one of which would go a long way 
toward supplying the whole of man’s consumption of Herrings. ” ’ 
So well known was the Herring, from the earliest days, to the inhabi¬ 
tants of Northern Europe and to their descendants who migrated to the 
western shores of the Atlantic, that one name serves to designate the fish 
in the languages of a majority of the peoples to whom it is known. Its 
name in English, German, and Dutch, though differently spelled, is 
pronounced in exactly the same way. To the Scandinavians it is known 
by the name “ Sill.” France in the name Clupee employs a form of the 
Latin for fishes of this group by which the same fish is known to these 
nations when described in the language of their men of science. There 
are also local names to designate certain conditions and ages. To this 
class belongs the name “Sperling,” employed by our own fishermen of 
Cape Ann to denote the young Herrings. Corresponding to this name 
the word “ Stromming ” is used in Sweden. 
The Herring is found in the temperate and colder parts of the North 
Atlantic. On the west, its range extends south to Sandy Hook, at the 
entrance of New York Harbor, where it is found occasionally in mid¬ 
winter, and on the north as far as Northern Labrador, diminishing in 
numbers perhaps toward the northern extreme. On the east its southern 
limit is in the vicinity of the Bay of Biscay, while northward it is found 
in the White Sea and on the southern shores of Spitzbergen. It of course 
