Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/450

434 Fishery Exhibition did me the honor to ask me to address you, that nothing could be more likely to interest my audience than a summary statement of what is now really known about a fish which, from a fisherman's point of view, is probably the chief of fishes.

I am aware that I may lay myself open to the application of the proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle if I commence my observations with a description of the most important distinctive characters of a fish which is so familiar to the majority of my hearers. And perhaps it is as well that I should at once express my belief that most of you are as little likely to mistake a herring for anything else as I am. Nay, I will go further. I have reason to believe that any herring-merchant, in a large way of business, who may be here, knows these fish so much better than I do that he is able to discriminate a Yarmouth herring from a Scotch herring, and both from a Norway herring; a feat which I could not undertake to perform. But then it is possible that I may know some things that he does not. He is very unlike other fishermen and fish-merchants with whom I have met, if he has any but the vaguest notions of the way of life of the fish; or if he has heard anything about those singularities of its organization which perplex biologists; or if he can say exactly how and why he knows that a herring is not a sprat, a shad, or a pilchard. And all kinds of real knowledge and insight into the facts of nature do so bear upon one another and turn out in strange ways practically helpful that I propose to pour out my scientific budget, in the hope that something more may come of it than the gratification of intelligent curiosity.

If any one wants to exemplify the meaning of the word "fish," he can not choose a better animal than a herring. The body, tapering to each end, is covered with thin, flexible scales, which are very easily rubbed off. The taper head, with its underhung jaw, is smooth and scaleless on the top; the large eye is partly covered by two folds of transparent skin, like eyelids—only immovable and with the slit between them vertical instead of horizontal; the cleft behind the gill cover is very wide, and, when the cover is raised, the large red gills which lie beneath it are freely exposed. The rounded back bears the single moderately long dorsal fin about its middle. The tail-fin is deeply cleft, and on careful inspection small scales are seen to be continued from the body, on to both its upper and its lower lobes, but there is no longitudinal scaly fold on either of these. The belly comes to an edge, covered by a series of sharply-keeled bony shields between the throat and the vent; and behind the last is the anal fin, which is of the same length as the dorsal fin. There is a pair of fore-limbs, or pectoral fins, just behind the head; and a pair of hind-limbs, or ventral fins, are situated beneath the dorsal fin, a little behind a vertical line drawn from its front edge, and a long way in front of the vent. These fins have bony supports or rays, all of which are soft and jointed.