A great and important group of the bony fish is comprised under the family name Clupedæ. It includes such useful fish as the herring, pilchard, shad, and anchovy. The family is as interesting to the merchant as to the gastronomist.
The herring hardly needs description here, but it may just be remarked, en passant, that its back, indigo-coloured after death, is greenish during life. The curious markings often found on the herring have been considered by ignorant fishermen to signify mysterious words of cabalistic import. On one November day, near three hundred years ago, two herrings were caught on the coast of Norway, which bore marks resembling Gothic printed [pg 169]characters. “They were presented to the then King of Norway, Frederick II., who was so frightened by the characters he saw on the backs of the innocent fish that he turned ghastly pale, for he thought that they announced his approaching death and that of his queen.” A council of savants was convened, and the learned ones solemnly reported that the words implied, “Very soon you will cease to fish herrings, as well as other people.” Some more politic scientists gave another explanation, but it was useless, for the king died next year, and his late subjects became firmly convinced that the two herrings had been celestial messengers charged to announce that monarch’s sudden end.
The herring abounds in the entire Northern Ocean from the coasts of France and England to Greenland and Lapland. They are very gregarious, and travel in immense shoals, their appearance in any specified locality being uncertain and always sudden. On the coast of Norway the electric telegraph is used to announce to the fishing towns the approach of the shoals, which can always be perceived at a distance by the wave they raise. In the fiords of Norway the herring fisheries are the principal means of existence for the seaboard population. So in 1857 the paternal Norwegian Government laid a submarine cable round the coast 100 miles in length, with stations ashore at intervals conveniently placed for the purpose of notifying the fishermen. In Holland the industries of catching and curing the fish are highly profitable; the fishery is in consequence known as “the great,” while whaling is known as the “small fishery.” To a simple Dutch fisherman, George Benkel, who died in 1397, Holland owes the introduction of the art of preserving and curing the herring. Two hundred years after his death, the Emperor Charles V. solemnly ate a herring on his tomb, as homage to the memory of the creator of a great national industry.
THE HERRING (Clupea harengus).
In our country there is also an important trade in the fish. Yarmouth sends out 400 vessels of from forty to sixty tons, the larger carrying a crew of twelve. In 1857 three fishing boats of this seaport brought home 3,762,000 fish. In Scotland the one town of Wick had a few years ago 920 boats employed in the fisheries.
The Dutch use lines 500 feet in length, with fifty or more nets to each. The upper part of these nets is buoyed with empty barrels or cork, while they are kept down by lead or stone weights; they can be lowered by lengthening the cord to which the buoys are attached. The meshes of the nets are so arranged that if the herring is too small to be caught in the first meshes, he passes through and gets caught in the succeeding one. Dr. Bertram went out in a Wick boat to the fishing grounds. He says:—[pg 170]“At last, after a lengthened cruise, our commander, who had been silent for half an hour, jumped up and called to action. ‘Up men, and at them!’ was the order of the night. The preparations for shooting the nets at once began by lowering sail. Surrounding us on all sides was to be seen a moving world of boats; many with sails down, their nets floating in the water, and their crews at rest. Others were still flitting uneasily about, their skippers, like our own, anxious to shoot in the right place. By-and-by we were ready; the ‘dog,’ a large inflated bladder to mark the far end of the train, is heaved overboard, and the nets, breadth after breadth, follow as fast as the men can pay them out, till the immense train is all in the water, forming a perforated wall a mile long and many feet in depth, the ‘dog’ and the marking bladder, floating and dipping in long zig-zag lines, reminding one of the imaginary coils of the great sea-serpent. After three hours of quietude beneath a beautiful sky, the stars—
“The eternal orbs that beautify the night”—
began to pale their fires, and the grey dawn appearing indicated that it was time to take stock. We found that the boat had floated quietly with the tide till we were a long distance from the harbour. The skipper had a presentiment that there were fish in his net, and the bobbing down of a few of the bladders made it almost a certainty; and he resolved to examine the drifts. ‘Hurrah!’ exclaimed Murdoch of Skye; ‘there’s a lot of fish, skipper, and no mistake.’ Murdoch’s news was true; our nets were silvery with herrings—so laden, in fact, that it took a long time to haul them in. It was a beautiful sight to see the shimmering fish as they came up like a sheet of silver from the water, each uttering a weak death-chirp as it was flung into the bottom of the boat. Formerly the fish were left in the meshes of the net till the boat arrived in the harbour; but now, as the net is hauled on board, they are at once shaken out. As our silvery treasure showers into the boat, we roughly guess our capture at fifty cranes—a capital night’s work.” Wick boats are not, however, always so fortunate. The herring fleet has been overtaken more than once by fearful storms, when valuable lives, boats, and nets, have been sacrificed.
Early in December, 1879, an apparent epidemic of suicide attacked the herrings and sprats in Deal Roads, and they rushed ashore in such myriads at Walmer that the fishermen got tired of carting them off, and they were left on the beach for all who cared to help themselves. Nature seems now and then to put bounds to over-population, but if this be the case, no herring famines need be feared, for economical Nature would never have played into the hands of the fishermen who are always at war with her. Such wholesale suicides occur among other forms of animal life. In Africa regiments of ants have been seen deliberately marching into streams, where they were immediately devoured by fish. Rats have migrated in myriads, stopping nowhere, neither day nor night, and have been preyed upon by both large birds and beasts of prey. In the Seychelles some years ago several hundred turtles conspired to die together on the island in front of the harbour, and carried out their decision. Were they the victims of hydrophobia, delirium tremens, or some other disease? Even the gay and sprightly butterfly has been known to migrate in immense clouds from the land straight out to sea, without the remotest chance of ever reaching another shore. What could be the reason for such a suicidal act?