Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/144

130 appearance and disappearance on the various parts of the coast of Europe. Thus Anderson, writing of the Mackerel, says that it "passes the winter in the north; towards the spring it approaches Iceland, Scotland, and Ireland, and enters the Atlantic Ocean, whence one column passes along the coast of Portugal and Spain, and enters the Mediterranean, while the other turns into the British Channel, and appears there in May, on the coasts of France and England; and from thence passes in June along those of Holland and Friesland. This second column having reached in July the coasts of Jutland, detaches a division, which, making the tour of that peninsula, enters the Baltic Sea; and the remainder, passing along the coast of Norway, return to the north."

Facts, however, do not agree with these statements; the appearance of this fish in shoals varies in the times of its occurrence, certainly, at different points on the coast; but does not at all follow the line of succession which a migration would involve. Thus the Mackerel appears on the Cornish shores often in March; on the coasts of Hampshire and Sussex, at the same time, and on the latter frequently in February; while in the bays of Devonshire, though an intermediate locality, they are not plentiful till June. On the French side of the channel, they appear later about Havre and Dieppe than at Dunquerque; which is the reverse of the order followed on our own south-eastern coasts, for little is done in the Mackerel fishery in Suffolk and Norfolk before the latter half of May, two or three months after it has begun on the coast of Sussex and Kent. In Scotland their occurrence is considerably later