CHAPTER XIV.

_THE HERRING AND ITS KINDRED._

BY F. G. AFLALO, F.Z.S.

"King herring," as the trade-paper of the fishing industry rightly calls it, is one of the chief commercial fishes of the British seas, and the enormous North Sea herring fisheries probably support more boats and men from all parts than any other. Europe has no very large herring; but the TARPON of the Mexican coast, as well as another giant which occurs in the northern waters of Australia, grows to an enormous size. All the members of the Herring Family feed and travel near the surface of the sea, and are therefore caught in drift-nets, miles of which are "shot" a few fathoms from the top of the water, catching the shoaling-fish in their meshes. All of them, too, are wanderers, most capricious in their goings and comings. Hence the uncertainty of the fisherman's wage.

The principal kinsmen of the herring in British seas are the SPRAT and PILCHARD, though the two kinds of SHAD, which, like the salmon, ascend certain rivers for spawning purposes, also support a number fishermen; and the ANCHOVY is, authorities have lately suspected, sufficiently numerous on the British coasts to repay a regular fishery, if the men could be induced to try the experiment and use a sufficiently fine-meshed net for this little fish.

The HERRING of the more northern waters is larger than that of the English Channel, 17 inches being recorded as its maximum size in the former, as against only 12¼ inches farther south. In the Baltic, however, the writer found the herrings still smaller than those of the English Channel. The herring lacks the lateral line, already alluded to in other fishes; its scales are large and thin; its under-edge is smooth and keeled; and the male is slightly the larger of the two sexes. The SPRAT, on the other hand, is a smaller species. It has no teeth; its belly is saw-edged; its back-fin starts nearer the tail than that of the herring. The herring, moreover, differs from the sprat, and indeed from all our most important fishes, in that its eggs sink to the bottom. The eggs of almost all other sea-fish float at or near the surface of the sea, so that the herring's spawn alone can be damaged by the operations of the ground-sweeping trawl-net. The shad's eggs also sink to the bottom, but are deposited in the less buoyant waters of rivers.

The PILCHARD, the all-important fish (together with mackerel) on the south-west coast of England, is of a more decided green hue than either of the foregoing. Its scales are large and coarse, and its back-fin starts closer to the head than in the rest. The pilchard of Cornwall and the sardine of the Mediterranean are one and the same fish in different stages of growth--that is to say, the pilchard is a grown-up sardine. The late Matthias Dunn of Mevagissey was one of the first practical fishermen to accept this identity, and the flourishing sardine factory at his native town bears lasting witness to his enterprise. Although, from the economic standpoint, we associate the pilchard with the extreme south-west of the English Channel, the fish finds its way to more eastern counties. The writer has found it at both Bournemouth and Ventnor; and it is taken, though sparsely, in the herring-nets of the North Sea fleets.

The ANCHOVY, smaller than any of the foregoing, may be distinguished by its projecting, shark-like snout and deeply cleft mouth. It is seen in England only pickled for table purposes, but the writer used fresh anchovies for bait almost daily during a stay of four months on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The two shads--the ALLIS SHAD and TWAITE SHAD--are in some respects, though less important commercially, the most interesting of the family. Their habit of coming up rivers to spawn, like salmon, has been already noticed, but they appear to be more difficult to please than the other fish. The Severn used to be a noted shad-river, but the fishery has fallen off of late years. The ALLIS SHAD grows to a weight of 7 or 8 lbs., and its pale green and silver scales are varied by some darker spots at irregular intervals on the shoulders and sides. The edge of the belly is serrated, like that of the sprat. The fish has a curious transparent eyelid, and its other peculiarities include an abnormally large number of gill-rakers, through which the water filters much as it does through the "whalebone" of whales. Its food is said to consist of small fishes and shrimps, as well as of vegetable substances. Though usually caught, for market purposes, in a seine-net, which is slipped round the shoal in shallow water, the shad is now and then taken on the hook, and instances of this are on record in the neighbourhood of Deal. The rivers of Morocco are very productive of shad, particularly the BOUREGREG at Rabat, and the UM ERBEYA at Azimur. At the latter town the writer has bought newly caught shad weighing 5 or 6 lbs. for native money equivalent to as many pence, and very excellent fish they proved in camp. The TWAITE SHAD is a somewhat smaller fish, attaining to a maximum weight of perhaps a couple of pounds. It is not known to differ materially in habits from the larger species.

Reverting for a moment to the herring as a type of the family, a few words may be said on some very interesting facts in connection with its life-history and commercial uses. In the first place, the fact that the spawn sinks to the bottom is of more importance than would at first sight appear, since it not only exposes this spawn to disturbance by the trawl, but also subjects it to the voracity of cod, haddock, and other ground-feeding fishes. Some little protection is afforded by a natural provision which enables the eggs to adhere to stones and weeds, but this cannot in the long-run be of much service against prowling fishes. The eggs of the shad, which likewise sink (in fresh-water), do not adhere in this way.

The migrations of the herring, again, have furnished almost as much material for argument to marine biologists as the migrations of birds in ornithological circles. Older naturalists described marvellous Arctic journeyings with careful attention to detail, much of which is now repudiated. Later theories hold that the shoals of herrings simply move, according to changes in the weather and temperature, backwards and forwards between the shore and the deeper water outside; and so far as the fishermen are concerned, the mere fact of the fish moving at any season of the year beyond reach of their drift-nets, which work at only moderate distances from the land, would be quite sufficient to convince them that the absent fish had departed on world-wide travels. Much of the former acceptance of these extensive migrations may have been due to confusion between the goings and comings of the different races of herrings now recognised by biologists. It is also probable that, when the identity and movements of these different "races" are more firmly established, we shall be able to clear up many of the difficulties at present surrounding the spawning-time of the herring, and to show that it does not, as sometimes alleged, deposit its spawn at every season of the year indiscriminately, but that some herrings spawn at one season, some at another. Although the herring is not, individually and by comparison with some other sea-fish, an enormously fertile fish, its numbers must be fairly large, when we bear in mind that something like 50,000 crans a week are, in good seasons, packed in Shetland alone. Taking, as an average, 750 fish to the cran, this gives a weekly curing of not far short of 40,000,000 of herrings in a single fishery. Owing indeed to the property, already noted, of adhering to stones and rocks, it is improbable that even the trawl troubles the eggs to any appreciable extent, as the stony ground on which the herrings generally spawn is not suited to the operations of the trawler. The spawning and life-history of the herring are, in fact, the converse of those of the plaice. The former deposits its eggs on the ground close inshore, and the young herrings, almost as soon as they are hatched, steer for the open sea and live near the surface of the water. The flat-fishes, on the other hand, deposit eggs that float at the surface some distance from the shore; and the young plaice and soles, when hatched, come inshore and take up their residence close to the bed of the sea.

It would be improper to conclude this account of the Herring Family without a passing reference to the commercial mixture known as "WHITEBAIT." Until comparatively late in the last century whitebait was regarded, even by scientific men, as a distinct species, and there were even some who declared that they had identified peculiar characters. It is now, however, common knowledge that the so-called "whitebait" is neither more nor less than a mixture of young herrings and sprats, the former predominating in summer, the latter in winter. Other fishes are also found in the dish, and, appropriately enough, at a recent banquet given by the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, at which the writer had the pleasure of "assisting," a plate of whitebait was found to include no sprats, but the fry of herrings, gurnards, and sand-eels: this was in the month of July. Whitebait are caught in special fine-meshed nets in river-estuaries; and although they make a capital dish for the epicure, the large supplies needed for the restaurants probably entail a most regrettable sacrifice of valuable food-fishes, which, if left a year or two, would provide food for ten times the number of consumers. It would, however, be too much to expect that epicures should give up such an unrivalled dish for this cause. Moreover, if these little fishes were not captured by man, it is highly probable that a large proportion would fall victims to birds or other fishes.

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