food, their teeth are small and feeble. The food as it passes through the gills
is strained from the water by a filtering mechanism called gill-rakers. These
are a double row of stiff appendages like long, slender, close-set bristles set
on the inner margin of each gill-arch. These gill-rakers serve as an effective
sieve and keep back all the plankton while the water pours through them.

This plankton-eating habit of the herring is most important from the
food value point of view for plankton is saturated with sunshine and its life-
giving properties pass directly into the fish. We all know the value of sunlight
these days, but few people realise how much of it is stored up in the oil of
the herring.

HOW HERRINGS ARE CAUGHT

There are two main methods of catching sea-fish—trawling and drifting.

In trawling, a bag shaped net, the trawl-net, is dragged along the ocean
floor and deep-swimming fish such as cod, haddock, plaice and ether
varieties are scooped up into it.

The second method, drifting, is carried on at those seasons when the
fish approach the coast in shoals and at distances usually thirty to forty miles
from the shore. In drifting, a curtain or wall of net, some thirty feet high
and two or three miles in length is "shot" or cast. The nets, eighty to a
hundred in number, are dropped over the side of the drifter as it steams
slowly on its way until this long meshed wall is complete. It hangs in the
water, suspended by floats or "buffs" as they are called, while the boat
drifts (hence the name) quietly in the tide. The fish swim against this
vertical wall and as they are not able to "go into reverse" wedge themselves
tighter and tighter in the mesh of the net.

Under these conditions drifting, of course, can only be used for fish
that swim in shoals near the surface of the water. Such fish are called
"pelagic." Herring, mackerel, pilchards and sprats are all pelagic fish, but
of these far and away the most important is the herring. Indeed, the other
pelagic catches are quite insignificant compared with our huge herring catch.

We do not know when the drift net was first invented, but it is
reasonable to suppose that it has been used since that far-off age when
herrings were first captured in the open sea for it is the only sort of net
by which surface swimming fish can be caught in large numbers.

The herring population round Great Britain is divided into many
separate families. Each family collects together in a shoal near spawning
time and goes on a holiday trip to the coastal waters. The different families
go to different places and at different seasons and so there are only a few
months in the year when one family or another is not holiday-making.

The Two Chief Herring Seasons.

It is when the herrings are in these shoals that the fishermen catch them.
The two chief herring fisheries are (1) off the Orkneys and Shetlands and the
North-east coast of Scotland during the early summer, and (2) off East
Anglia in October and November. The East Anglian fishery is'the most
important of all.   You will get some idea of the quantities caught when I