Fig. 213.—Pescado blanco, Chirostoma humboldtianum (Val.). Lake Chalco, City of Mexico.
Fig. 214.—Red Goatfish, or Salmonete, Pseudupeneus maculatus Bloch. Family Mullidæ (Surmullets).
Abundance of Food-fishes.—In general, the economical value of any species depends not on its toothsomeness, but on its abundance and the ease with which it may be caught and preserved. It is said that more individuals of the herring (Clupea harengus in the Atlantic, Clupea pallasi in the Pacific) exist than of any other species. The herring is a good food-fish and whenever it runs it is freely sought. According to Björnsön, wherever the school of herring touches the coast of Norway, there a village springs up, and this is true in Scotland, Newfoundland, and from Killisnoo in Alaska to Otaru in Japan, and to Strielok in Siberia. Goode estimates the herring product of the North Atlantic at 1,500,000,000 pounds annually. In 1881 Professor Huxley used these words:
Fig. 215.—Great Parrot-fish, or Guacamaia, Pseudoscarus guacamaia Bloch & Schneider. Florida.
Fig. 216.—Striped Mullet, Mugil cephalus (L.). Woods Hole, Mass.
"It is said that 2,500,000,000 or thereabout of herrings are every year taken out of the North Sea and the Atlantic. Suppose we assume the number to be 3,000,000,000 so as to be quite safe. It is a large number undoubtedly, but what does it come to? Not more than that of the herrings which may be contained in one shoal, if it covers half a dozen square miles, and shoals of much larger size are on record. It is safe to say that scattered through the North Sea and the Atlantic, at one and the same time, there must be scores of shoals, any one of which would go a long way toward supplying the whole of man's consumption of herrings."
