eee 
; 
VI.—SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE FOOD OF THE HERRING. 
By Tuomas Scorr, LL.D., F.L.S., Mem. Soc. Zool. de France. 
The organisms which constitute the food of the herring—their various 
kinds, their distribution, and their influence on the movements of the 
fish—have for a long time engaged the attention of students of marine 
natural history, and it is now many years since the Fishery Board for 
Scotland commenced investigations into the nature of the food of the 
herring and of various other problems counected with the herring 
fisheries of Scctland. 
In 1885 an important paper on the food of the herring was con- 
tributed to the Fourth Annual Report of the Fishery Board for Scotland 
by the late George Brook, F.LS., in collaboration with Mr W. L. 
Calderwood, the present Inspector of Salmon Fisheries for Scotland. In 
this paper the results of the examination of between fourteen and fifteen 
hundred stomachs of herring containing food are given in detail in a 
Table which fills eighteen pages of the Report. 
The stomachs had been received from various places all round Scot- 
land, including the district of Berwick-on-Tweed, the Firths of Forth and 
Tay, Aberdeen, the Moray Firth District, Loch Broom, West Ross-shire, 
and the Firth of Clyde, including Loch Fyne. All these stomachs were 
such as contained food that could in most cases be idextified. Many 
other stomachs had been examined, but as they proved to be empty or 
the food they contained was so disintegrated by the digestive fluids as to 
be undistinguishable, they were by the authors excluded from the 
paper in question. 
The observations which follow, and which may be considered as 
supplementary to the paper by Brook and Calderwood, describe the 
results obtained from the examination of fully five hundred herrings’ 
stomachs, selected from various fishing centres in Scotland. The Table 
appended contains a summarised statement of the number of stomachs 
and of the dates when they were examined, and also of the localities 
from whence they were sent.* 
TaBie I. 
Dates when the.| Number of 
stomachs were | stomachs Localities whence the fish were sent. 
examined. examined. 
December 1904 17 Loch Fyne. 
February 1905 55 Loch Fyne, Loch Broom. 
June < 122 Campbeltown, Loch Broom, Stornoway, 
Anstruther. ' 
July fe 93 Loch Fyne, Campbeltown, Stornoway. 
August we 19 Kilbrennan Sound (Pirnmill). 
September _,, 33 Loch Fyne, Carradale. 
December _,, 38 Loch Fyne. 
January 1906 31 Campbeltown. 
September ,, 11 Loch Fyne. 
October a ll Loch Fyne. 
November ,, 12 Loch Fyne, Shetland, Wick, Peterhead. 
December _,, 11 Loch Fyne, Girvan, Rothesay. 
January 1907 le Clyde, Stornoway. 
February ,, 19 Campbeltown, Rothesay, Stornoway. 
March i 22 Campbeltown, Skipness, Stornoway. 
April 45 5 Skipness, Machrie Bay (Arran). 
*{ desire to acknowledge the assistance I have received in this inquiry from my 
colleague, Dr. H. C. Williamson. 
