four pounds, was recaptured on June 28th, when it had increased in weight as much as five pounds, its total weight being, when recaptured, nine pounds. Another specimen increased eight pounds in a period of five months and a half. Whilst the salmon grows rapidly enough in its earlier stages, it is not thought that that fish grows now to the same size as in former years; a consequence, no doubt, of the increasing demand which has told so severely on some of our English streams as totally to impoverish them. Salmon of eighty pounds weight were known to exist fifty years ago, and salmon of fifty pounds were not at all rare, while fish of forty pounds were quite common; but now the usual run of salmon weigh from twelve to twenty-five pounds; and there are fishermen who assert, that the system of over-fishing, so long persevered in, is deteriorating the quality as well as diminishing the weight of the fish.
The salmon is not the only fish which migrates. The eel is also a great traveller, but in a way quite opposite to the salmon—that is to say, the eel spawns in the sea; and, at the proper season, the young fish ascend to the river, where they remain till they in turn are seized with the instinct to visit the salt water. The land crabs do the same, they proceed annually to the sea-shore in a great procession, travelling in a body from the far interior; they remain at the edge of the water for a few days, during which time they deposit their spawn, and then they return home to undergo their annual moult.
The migration of the common herring is an old story now, but is still occasionally revived by ignorant writers; and it is curious as showing the growth of knowledge in matters relating to the natural history of fish. The supposition was, that the herring was a native of the Polar regions, and that it annually came to the British coasts in a vast horde, in order to spawn, the young departing for the same icy region as soon as ever they were able to swim so far. It is a pity that this fine old myth has been submitted to the laws of logic: it was so imaginative, so poetic. The grand shoal, moved by certain weather influences, was depicted as setting out for Britain at an early period of the year. The body of fish was so immense as to defy enumeration. A space equal to all the parks of London, covered with herrings as close as they could lie together, and at least half a mile in depth, would not be anything like equal to a tenth part of this great herring “heer!” which annually came to us from the high latitudes of the north. This gigantic host of fish came in one great body as far as Iceland, where it was broken into two divisions, each of which took, by a marvellous instinct, its own proper route. The great army destined by its invasion to give wealth to the people of Britain, subdivided itself at the Shetland Islands, and with the precision of regularly disciplined soldiers, brigades departed to all the points of the compass; these again broke up into other squads, each finding out the particular bay or frith in which it was destined to pass the summer months, and perpetuate its kind, and at the same time yield food and wealth to thousands of the population. At the proper season, instinct taught the various divisions of the herring army to unite for the homeward passage; and it is needless to state that the parties who invented the story took care that each division should join at the precise spot where it had separated, so that the body might reach its Polar home in the exact order of its departure. The young fish, after luxuriating for a time in the shallow waters, where they had come to life, gradually followed the example of their parents, and left for the far north, there to feed on the thousands of minute crustaceans which are known to inhabit those icy regions.
As regards the sprat, an ingenious “old voyager,” who takes an interest in such questions, has informed the world, through a local newspaper, that it also is a migratory fish, but that its habits are in every respect the opposite of the herring; in other words, the sprat, he says, goes to the North Pole to spawn, and the young fish kindly come here in the winter months—to afford employment to the costermongers perhaps, and a dish for the Lord Mayor’s feast. Of course, this idea is sheer nonsense, and is only worthy of citation, as showing the absurdities which people invent, in order to have a royal road to learning.
The sprat and the herring are as local to Britain and some other countries, as the whale is to Greenland. They breed and grow all along our coasts, all the year round, as do most kinds of British fish and Crustacea. We have seen the herring in all its stages of growth, from the minute ova to the sizeable summer fish. A jar with herrings newly hatched was lately in our possession, the young fish swimming about like bits of feather or cotton thread, but it is impossible to keep them alive for any length of time, they are so fragile. It would be interesting, however, if herrings could be grown from the egg in presence of our naturalists, as indeed it would be in the case of all other kinds of fish; and there need be no despair on the subject, after what has been achieved in the case of the salmon at Stormontfield, and after what has been done in constructing oyster-beds in the seas, and breeding fresh-water fishes in the rivers of France. Although we are yet but groping, as it were, in the rudiments of sea-science, a time is rapidly approaching when we may hope to have the wonders of the deep revealed to us, of which we are now ignorant, so that we may know much more accurately than we do now the conditions which regulate the vast stores of food-wealth that lie at our command when we choose to do business in the great deep.
MORE RECOLLECTIONS OF A RETIRED BUTLER.
- ↑ See page 179.
