The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-25
THE GREAT SCHOOLS
 CF FINE HERRING They Are the Food of the Bigger Fish and of
 Mankind.
THEIR MIGRATIoNs
The Meat and Greens Pro- vided for Them
 by Nature.

A trip with the fishermen who go to
 meet the great armies of herring on
 their leisurely semi-annual migration
 to the spawning grounds is a revela-
 ton in the way of affording a concep-
 ton of the immense number of these
 fish. It is even exciting to catch a sight of the herring school for the
 first time The sea gHtters as far as
 the eye can reach with the reflected sheen from tho silver-sided multitude. l The air vibrates with the wings of the | lnnumerable gannets and other gulls, sweeping as often as appetite calls to | snatch another meal from the prodigal provision beneath. There is a splash ing, romping fringe on three sides of
 seals, white, pig-lil1e porpoises, little blue herring sharks, with now and then the fukelike tail of a grampus, stand ing bolt upright dozen feet out of
 the water.
 The great curtain nets, as well as the seines, have to be of the stoutest materials, or they would be, as indeed l they often are, smashed by the dead weight of the multitude The side ropes and meshes are at certain sea- sons incrusted several inches thick with herring spawn, which gives the water a milky appearance for miles. But all this does not give one such, an idea of the amazing size of these sil- yer clad armies of the sea as does a walk on the beach counties after a heavy gale in the spawning time. The eggs of the heinz fan at that season though the water and in gummy clusters affix themselves to stocks and stones at the bottom.
 Each one is about quarter of an inch in size, protected by fairly stout l gelatinous slightly horny shell These are often thrown out by heavy gales and lie upon the shore knee deep, Far mers busy themselves for days cartlng | these eggs to their fields, where they | form a valuable manure.
 ! An observer. in Pleasant bay, on the Magdalen islands, reported that the sand was covered two or three feet deep with them for several miles" No uninstructed person could believe that these incredible masses of marine flot- sam were of animal origin. There are l thousands of tons of them, each ton aggregating millions of potential her rings,
 The shoals of herrings are never ap- preciably smaller, in spite of the vast quantities of spawn thus destroyed by gales or high tides. Each herring, it has lately been demonstrated, produces about S0,O0O eggs each season. The old naturalists used to calculate the num- Der as ten times as great.
 The fishermen take thousands of bar rels of mature herring each year. The lobster fishery alone uses 40,0O0 barrels for bait; the codfshery many times that numbers. The manufacture of herring oil disposes of immense num- bers also Each barrel of fish produces nearly three gallons of oil and fifth of a ton of expensive fish guano. Only the best fish are barrelled for sale.
 On the Pacific coast the fish are even more numerous than on this side of the continent. Tn one year one of the American companies, the Alaska oil and guano company, shipped 172,0O0 gallons of herring oil, 1,20O tons of guano and 192 barrels of choice her. ring. This represented about 60,Oo0 bar els of herrings Hundreds of thousands of barrels are taken altogether in American waters each year.
 How these prodigious armies of fish get their living In the sea has only been exactly determined during the past few years. Tn fact, experiments to perfect the proof are still going on along thls coast.
 Following to a logical conclusion the argument that all animal life depends directly or indirectly upon the vege- table kingdom, dragnet composed of the finest sort of bolting cloth used by millers was drawn slowly behind a steamer across a bay. The result was surprising. An acre of salt water, 1t was discovered, produces about as much vegetation in @ year as an acre of good meadow land
 One great naturalist has computed that if one of countless number of varying minute organisms was allow ed perfect development without any counteracting destruction for one month, the product would De mass of protoplasm many times larger than the sun One little plant multiplies it. self by breaking in two about five times a day and becomes mature in three hours.
 An immense number of tiny animals browse upon this rapidly increasing herbage, and together with 1t consti- tute plankton, which is the scientific name for this prepared ration of meat and greens dealt out in amazing quan- titles at Natures free lunch counter.
 The herring family is provided with an automatic strainlng apparatus of the utmost fneness whereby as they breathe the water through their gills they unconseiously sift out their daily food. Thus they have the happiness of feeding without effort and of finding their supplies without exertion, and thus they<stand at the very apex of idealistic trampdon.
 To one who knows the secret of tha green colorng of the ocean the v-f'3- der is not how do it's countless animals get their living, but how the a-.2zing vegetation of the plankton can possi- bly, be kept under, even by the multudi- nous grazing things which throng those aqueous pasturages. Letter from l Gaspe, Can, in the New York Sun.