First Article.
Of all the branches of study into which natural history has been divided,
the most interesting, from its extensiveness, its variety, and the
almost insurmountable difficulties which it presents to the student,
is Ichthyology. To acquire a thorough knowledge of zoology requires
much labour, study, travel, and considerable risk; in like manner with
ornithology, in the prosecution of which the difficulties are greater,
from the mixture of elements; but still the inhabitants of the air have
thus much in common with us, that they live in the same atmospheric
medium, derive their sustenance from the same earth, and although the
difficulties of following their motions, and observing (unseen by
them) their habits and natures, are considerable, yet still, thanks to
the extension of science, they have not proved unconquerable, and the
telescope, in that form called the ornithoscope, has enabled man to
acquire a large store of information on this interesting subject. But
with ichthyology how widely different! Here the preliminary obstacle
which presents itself is an element fatal to the existence of man within
it, and out of which the creatures with whose nature he would fain
be acquainted cannot exist. His very powers of observation are thus
rendered useless, except in a very limited degree. They are bounded by a
glass vase, or a small clear pond at the utmost, and confined to a few
specimens of the smaller fishes, and even then it is doubtful whether
circumstances may not have altered their really natural habits. Yet
above these obstacles the mind of man has risen, and by the union of
analogy with laborious and constant observation, he has succeeded in
classing a large amount of the tenants of the mighty deep. But before he
can ascertain what proportion, or write the history of any one of them
fully, he must discover some substitute for gills which will enable him
to extract the necessary air for his existence from the water, and thus
enable him to search the depths of ocean, and seek its inhabitants in
their haunts. That such may yet be discovered by the ingenuity of man,
let no one deem impossible.
Amongst the fishes hitherto discovered and classed, the herring (_Clupea
harengus_) is one of the most universally known, most generally useful,
and one of the greatest boons of an all-bounteous Providence to the
inhabitants of these countries. Abundance, the universal producer of
contempt, has caused this beautiful creature to be despised; but to
the naturalist’s eye few creatures are possessed of greater charms.
When first taken out of the water, it is of a dark-bluish and green
colour on the back, lightening down the sides to a silvery blue, which
shades to white on the belly. The scales have a clear lustrous golden
colour, which changes in various shades of light after the manner of
mother-of-pearl; they lie over one another in regular lines, with the
convex edges pointing towards the tail. The termination of the body is
remarkable for the beautiful dark-green colour which it exhibits when
held before the light. The fins are seven in number--one dorsal, of
eighteen or nineteen rays; two ventral, of nine rays each; one anal, of
seventeen rays; two pectoral, of eighteen or nineteen rays each; and the
caudal, or tail fin, of eighteen or nineteen rays. The eyes are placed
in the middle of the sides of the head; the iris is of a silvery white
colour, and the pupil black. The spine consists of fifty-six vertebræ.
The ribs are thirty-five or six in number on each side, and there are
several minute bones below the ribs, which terminate in soft elastic
muscles at the anal fin, and serve to give it strength and elasticity.
Fifty-two bones compose the head. The bronchiæ or gills are four on each
side, each gill being supported by an arched cartilage; and there are two
imperfect gills without the arch, which join the gill lid, and appear
to regulate its motions. The convex side of the gills is furnished with
fringed fleshy fibres, of a strong red colour when the fish is healthy;
the concave side, which is next the mouth, is furnished with long
serrated spines. The heart is placed in a cavity near the gills, above
the stomach; it is three sided, and consists of a single auricle and
ventricle. The œsophagus, or gullet, is remarkably short in proportion
to the size of the fish; the stomach is thin, membranous, and capable
of great distension. The gut is of uniform size throughout. The gall
bladder is small, and of a dark-green colour; the liquid is of a light
claret hue, having a sweetish pungent taste. The air bag, or _vesica
natatoria_, is of a silvery white colour, round, of nearly the length of
the stomach, and pointed and narrow at both ends; it is connected with
the funnel-shaped posterior part of the stomach by a duct. The use of
the _vesica natatoria_, or, as it is commonly called, the _swim_, is to
enable the fish, by inflating or expelling the air from it, to rise or
sink, for if the air-bag of a living fish be pierced, the creature sinks
at once to the bottom. The under jaw of the herring projects beyond
the upper. The form and consistency of its nose proves its use for the
purpose of feeling, in the absence of the cirri or feelers possessed by
other fishes. The skin not being provided with the _corpus papillæ_, and
being besides covered with scales, it is supposed that the sensation of
touch is either very limited or wholly wanting. The herring is provided
with two nostrils; and from the perfection of the olfactory organ, it is
presumed that its sense of smell is very acute. It has no external organs
of hearing but a fringed orifice below the eye on the inner side of that
part of the head which covers the gills. Fishermen affirm that their
sense of hearing is very acute, and state instances of their immediately
ceasing the peculiar pattering noise which they are accustomed to make on
calm evenings, if a loud sound is made on any part of the interior of the
boat.
The Swedes attribute the departure of the herrings from the neighbourhood
of Gothenburg to the frequent firing of the British ships of war which
were stationed there for convoys; and so great is the influence which
fishermen have been accustomed to attribute to sound, that we are told
in Chambers’s Picture of Scotland that the bell of St Monance in Fife,
which was suspended from a tree in the churchyard, was removed every year
during the herring season, lest the noise should scare the fish from the
coast.
The mouth of the herring is furnished with a few teeth in the upper and
lower jaws, and four rows in the tongue. These pointing inwards, enable
it the more readily to secure and swallow its slippery prey, which
chiefly consists of extremely minute animals, such as small medusæ, the
_Oniscus marinus_, and small cancri and animalcula. The herrings on the
coast of Norway sometimes feed upon a small red worm called the Roé-aal,
which renders them unfit for curing; but there is probably no fish so
indiscriminate in its food. The herring is often caught with flies, at
which it leaps readily, and frequently with naked unbaited hooks. Mr
Mitchell, in his article on the herring in the Quarterly Journal of
Agriculture, mentions that in the stomachs of several herrings which he
examined, he found numbers of young sand-eels, and he adds a very curious
observation, namely, that in the stomachs of such herrings as had the
milt or roe small and immature, the sand-eels were numerous; whereas in
those which had the milt or roe full grown, there were none whatsoever;
but he offers no suggestion to account for this remarkable circumstance.
They also frequently feed on their own ova and young.
The herring propels itself through the water by rapidly moving the
tail from side to side, the other fins being employed in steadying and
probably aiding its movement, and it is this rapid waving of the tail
which causes the rippling or pattering sound which announces the presence
of a shoal when swimming near the surface. On a calm night their course
may be traced by a brilliant phosphorescent light, which illuminates the
surface of the water, and is emitted partly from the fish themselves, and
partly from the minute marine animals with which the ocean swarms.
Sometimes herrings do not approach the surface, and fine healthy shoals
are often apt to swim deep; hence fishermen, through their ignorance in
trusting too much to appearances, are frequently misled, they being apt
to suppose that when they see no gulls or large fishes of prey exhibiting
their gluttonous gambols, there are no herrings present, whilst the
finest and choicest may be at the moment in millions beneath them; in
fact, those which swim near the surface are usually the young, the
gorged, and the sickly. Mr Mitchell informs us that several experienced
masters of Dutch herring busses assured him that the only appearances
they ever sought for were the colour of the sea, which should be a dark
green, and its consistence apparently muddy. There is an additional fact
worthy of observation, which is, that in clear dry weather the fish keep
down at the bottom, and do not ascend until the moon rises.
The migration of the herring has been long a disputed point, and from
the difficulties to which we have alluded in the commencement of this
article, of observing minutely or accurately the movements or nature of
fishes, it is likely to remain unsettled much longer. The old and long
received opinion has been, that the winter habitation of the herring is
under the vast fields of ice which surround the North Pole within the
Arctic Circle; that they there deposit their spawn and advance southwards
with the opening year, making their appearance off the Zetland islands
about the month of April, and coming upon the coasts of Ireland and
Scotland in June. Off Thurso they are sometimes taken as early as May,
but June, July, and August, are the months in which the fishing is most
actively commenced off the west Highlands of Scotland. Off the east
coast of Ireland, near Arklow, the fishery used to commence in June, but
latterly it has been postponed till October. The fluctuations in the
time of commencing the herring fishery at various places, and the fact
of a winter fishery being successfully carried on in some parts--as for
instance at Killybegs, where they are taken from December till March, and
along the whole coast of Ireland south of Galway Bay, where there are
sufficient indications that the fishery might be successfully carried
on the whole year--have at length caused the hitherto received opinion
of their migration from the Arctic Circle to be questioned, and Mr
Mitchell has given many sound arguments in refutation of it. He divides
the theories upon the subject into three:--first, that the herrings come
from the North Pole in great shoals of many leagues in extent, dividing
into lesser shoals on coming towards the north point of Scotland;
second, that they do not come from the Arctic regions, but from a less
northerly direction, still, however, very far north of Shetland; and,
third, that they are spawned on the coasts near which they are caught,
and are consequently natives; that after spawning, they retire out to
sea, and continue so until their spawning season comes round again, when
they return to their accustomed shore. The latter he considers to be the
most reasonable theory, and adduces in support of it the well-known fact
that the herrings at every fishing station are of a peculiar quality
uniformly the same, and always different from those at other even very
nearly adjoining stations; and so well has this fact been established,
that practical men can at once pronounce from the size, appearance,
and quality of the fish, where it was taken. For example, the herrings
taken off the coast of Stadtland in Norway are almost twice the size of
those taken near Shetland, and these are twice the size of those caught
near Thurso, whilst the Dublin Bay herrings have long been famous for
their superior flavour, which is unmatched by those of any other bay or
harbour. Again, a size of herrings similar to those of Yarmouth visited
till lately the coast of Lumfiord in Denmark, whilst on the Mecklenburg
coast higher up the Baltic, the herrings are one-third larger than those
of Lumfiord; and proceeding up the Baltic above Mecklenburg to the
Pomeranian and part of the Prussian coasts, they are fully one-third
_smaller_; and again still farther up they are larger. In quality and
condition they differ as much as in size, those off the coast of Holland
being so inferior as not to be worth pickling, and the Dutch fishermen
consequently seek the coasts of Scotland and England.
As to the time of appearance at the several fishing stations, their
irregularity goes far to prove their constant propinquity, the take
commencing at some of the more southern stations before the northern
ones; whereas, if they migrated regularly from the north, it is evident
that the fishing should commence at the various stations in regular
order, from the most northern where the shoals would first make their
appearance, to the next, and so on to the most southward, which should be
deserted by them at some certain season, in order that they might return.
But there is no well-authenticated instance of those prodigious shoals of
herrings having been met with approaching the south in any high northern
latitude; and so far from their abounding in the Arctic regions, none
have been found in the Greenland seas, nor have any been discovered in
the stomachs of the whales killed there. Egede, who resided in Greenland
for fifteen years, and compiled the natural history of it, after
enumerating the fishes, adds, “No herrings are to be seen;” whilst on the
contrary, the whales which feed principally on herrings, frequent our own
coasts. These arguments appear to be fatal to the theory of the Arctic
migration, and to support most powerfully that of the mere retirement
of the herring to the deep. But Mr Mitchell goes farther, and asserts,
upon the evidence of the celebrated naturalists Bloch and Lacepede, that
“fishes of a similar size even in fresh water cannot go above half a
mile a-day, and that therefore herrings could not make, even from spring
to autumn, the long voyage attributed to them.” Now, this appears to be
going too far, and we would prefer that the argument should rest on the
former grounds, excluding this, which seems to be a weak assertion,
founded upon the observation that fishes do not proceed far from their
haunts, whilst the fact is, that they merely move about in search of
food; but who that has seen the rapid movement of a trout, or of the very
fish we are treating of, could for a moment entertain the idea of their
progress being confined to a rate that the crawling snail might equal?
Mr Mitchell himself mentions a fact that alone is sufficient to rebut
such an assertion, namely, that shortly after the union between England
and Scotland, an immense shoal of herrings ran ashore near Cromarty, and
covered the beach to the depth of several feet; and he adds, “Strange to
say, however, the shoal left the Frith in a single night, and no shoals
made their appearance again for more than half a century.”
Now, if they could make but half a mile a-day, how could they have
returned several miles in a single night? But this argument was
unnecessary, and it would be well for many persons to know that an
ill-sustained argument is not merely a bad prop to a cause, but a wedge
inserted for the advantage of an adversary, placed ready for his use in
overturning it.
But the most powerful argument against the theory of migration seems to
have escaped Mr Mitchell’s observation; it is--that the herrings do not
retire to spawn, as was asserted, but actually spawn near the fishing
stations, and retire after it. Their spawn is taken up in abundance, and
the nets are always found to contain large quantities of it, whilst the
assertion that no young herrings are found near our shores, is altogether
absurd, the contrary being the fact. The fecundated roe has the power,
after having been deposited, of attaching itself firmly to the stones,
rocks, or sea-weed, and in about three weeks after deposition, the young
fry come forth from the eggs, and are seen in millions near the shore; in
six or seven weeks they are about three inches in length, and arrive at
maturity in about eighteen months.
Lacepede tells that in North America the inhabitants carry the
herring-spawn from the spawning ground to the mouths of rivers and
other places not before frequented by the fish, and those places become
forthwith regular resorts for them; and the same authority mentions the
fact of a similar custom in Sweden.
Thus the theory of the herring being a native of the place which it is
accustomed to frequent annually, seems to be satisfactorily established;
and having thus presented our readers with such information upon the
subject of the natural history of the herring as our space permits, we
shall close this article, reserving some account of the various modes of
fishing and methods of curing, for another paper.