HOW AND WHERE THE HERRING SPAWNS.
According to a contemporary, we learn that Professor Cossar Ewart, Edinburgh University, convener of the Scientific Investigation Committee of the Board of Fisheries, was at the beginning of March at the well-known fishing-ground off the coast of Ayrshire known as the banks of Ballantrae, when some interesting investigations were made into the nature of the sea-bottom and spawn deposited on that famous herring-bed. The banks were dredged from a depth of eight to twenty-two fathoms. At a depth of eight to eleven fathoms the bottom was composed of clean gravel, with very little seaweed; beyond the eleven fathoms, clay, mud, and shell. On the stones lifted by the dredge, portions of herring spawn were found firmly attached to the surface of the stones in different stages of development, the more advanced manifesting, in lively action, the embryo herring. Spawn was also taken from the living herring and placed on glasses in hatching-boxes, and these also showed the eggs in progress of development. From a small stone of a few inches of surface as many eggs were found as, if allowed to arrive at maturity, would have yielded crans of herrings. The information obtained by Professor Cossar Ewart, during his recent dredgings, will be of the greatest importance in throwing light upon a hitherto but imperfectly understood question in natural history.
The banks in the evening presented a scene of lively interest, for as the sun began to set, a school of at least forty whales and porpoises began to play, and, circling around the margin of the fishing-banks, rose and fell in graceful plunges, their black fins and backs rising in curves for a moment, and then disappearing, while the porpoises made wild leaps many feet clear out of the water. Their presence was accounted for next morning, when a good many of the seine trawlers entered Loch Ryan and Girvan with from one to three hundred baskets of herrings each.
Professor Cossar Ewart has since had some more successful dredgings. He has also made some important discoveries regarding natural and artificial spawning, and deposited live herring and a quantity of spawn in the aquarium at Rothesay.