Halec. The Herring. E. Albin Del: 1739.
The HERRING.
Harengus, in Icthyology, a species of the Clopea. Its Harengi forms are these: its length is generally seven or eight inches, though it sometimes grows to a foot; its head is flatted, and its mouth placed upwards: it has a green back and sides mingled with blue, and a belly of a silver cast; its scales are large and round. It is not spotted at all, and its belly is carinated; the ridge is quite smooth, and not at all serrated; its side lines are small, and scarce distinguishable; the lower jaw is stronger and more prominent than the upper; its gills are four in number, as in other fishes; their fibres very long, and open remarkably wide; so that this fish dies almost as soon as taken out of the water: it has one fin on its back, which consists of about seventeen rays, and is between the head and the tail; the two ventral fins have nine rays, the pectoral seventeen, and the anal fourteen; the tail is forked. The name Herring, takes its derivation from the German Heer, an army, which expresses their number when they migrate our seas. Herrings are found in vast quantities from the highest northern latitudes as low as the northern coast in France; on the coast of America large shoals of them are to be met with as low as Carolina. In Kamtschatka they are also to be found, and very possibly in Japan: their winter rendezvous is within the arctic circle; they retire there after spawning, and wherever they can meet with insect food. They are in full roe at the end of June, and in perfection till the commencement of winter, when they begin to deposit their spawn.
PRESERVED HERRINGS.
Various are the names given to them, and according as they are ordered: as,
1st. Sea-Sticks are what are caught all the fishing season, and but once packed. A barrel of these contains six or eight hundred; according to law, eight barrels go to the hundred. A hundred of Herrings is one hundred and twenty; a last is ten thousand; and they generally reckon fourteen barrels to the last.
2d. Repacked Herrings are Herrings repacked on shore. Seventeen barrels of Sea-Sticks make from twelve to fourteen barrels of repacked Herrings. They repack them in the following manner: take out the Herrings, wash them in their own pickle, and lay them orderly in a fresh barrel: they have no salt put to them; but after being close packed, have a sworn copper put over them with the pickle when the barrel is half full: the pickle is brine; so strong that the herring may swim in it.