HERRING

(Germ, heer, an army; in reference to the great numbers in which the fishes so called appear, at stated seasons, along our coasts.) The name is commonly applied to two distinct but closely allied species of the genus Clupea, Linnaeus: to the? one Mr. Yarrell restricts the name of Clupea harcngus; the other is denominated Clupea Leachit, in commemoration of the excellent naturalist who first appears to have been a ware that our coast produced a second species of herring. The genus Clupea is so nearly allied to the genus Salmo that they are both included in the same natural family, under the name of Halecoids, by M. Aga iz; the principal external difference consists in the absence of the small adipose dorsal fin in the Clupea. But in the clupeoids, as in the salmon tribe, the upper maxillary as well as the intermaxillary bones enter into the formation of the mouth, and are both armed with teeth; the body is always covered with numerous scales; and, in the greater number of the herring tribe, there is an air bladder, and the duodenum is complicated with many caca, or pyloric appendages. The annual migration of the herring is not, as has been described, from one latitude to another, but simply from a deeper to a shallower part of the ocean. The common species, impelled by the stimulus of the increasing burthen of milt or row, quits the deeper rece es of the ocean, where it has pa ed the winter and spring months, and approaches the shallower water near the coasts, where the ova may be deposited, and impregnated with the requisite amount of heat, light, and oxygen for their development. The common herring visits different parts of our coast in autumn, generally earlier on the southern than on the northern localities, and deposits its ova and spawn towards the end of October. In this state the fish are termed " shotten herring," and they retire from the shore into deep water. Leach's herring has a different season of sexual migration. " It is found," says Mr. Yarrell, " heavy with roe at the end of January, which it does not deposit till the middle of February Its length is not more than seven inches and a half, and its depth near two inches." During the long period in which the herring stays in deep water, the shoals occasionally travel so far as to appear at the next season of oviposition at a different part of the coast from that where they were previously abundant. Hence the herring has been described as a most capricious fish; and it is truly said, " that there is scarcely a fishing station round the British islands that has not experienced in the visits of this fish the greatest variations, both as to time and quantity, without any accountable reason. Herrings are taken in drift nets, and during the night. The stretching of the nets in the daytime is forbidden, as it is supposed that the practice would alarm and drive away the shoal. The darkest nights, and a breeze that ruffles the surface of the water, are the circumstances which most favour the capture of the herring. [s. 567]