The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

1GTHE NOETH-EAST ATLANTIC.constant and ever-increasing supply of oils and skins, and these fisheries areaccordingly conducted with ever-increasing eagerness. But all things beinglinked together in nature, from the huge whale to the microscopic foraminifer,any disturbance of the balance in one section of the marine fauna must necessarilyproduce a general displacement in all the other branches down to the most rudimentaryorganisms.The fishes which are sought near the coasts and on the submarine banks are soprolific that they do not seem to have yet been threatened with extermination.Besides, the numbers taken by the fishermen are insignificant compared with theprodigious slaughter going on between hostile species in the seas themselves. Theimportance of the cod as an article of food is well known, but there is no dangerof the species being diminished by the fisheries in the Iceland and Bockall waters,on the Fiiroer and Dogger Banks, or by the 20,000 Norwegians and Lapps engagedin this industry about the Lofoten Islands ; only the shoals do not now alwaysmake their appearance in the same regions, and before the application of telegraphythe fishermen often lost many days and even weeks in their search. Whilemost fish, such as the salmon, sturgeon, and smelt, leave the high seas to lay theireggs in the streams and along the coasts, the cod, on the contrary, spawns in thedeep waters, where the embryos are developed far from the land. Hence, howevergreat may be the destruction of the fry and mature animal along the seaboard, thevast laboratories where the race itself is renewed remain untouched.Economically still more important than the cod is the herring, at least300,000,000 of which are taken on the Norwegian shores alone. It is wellknown how much this fish has contributed to the prosperity and influence ofHolland.Yet the fishers have often fancied that it might grow scarce in the Atlantic.But if the shoals disappear in one place, they never fail to reappear in another inunreduced numbers, making the waters alive, so to say, and followed by multitudesof carnivorous animals. " It seemed," says Michelet, " as if a vast island hademerged, and a continent was about to be upheaved."* For two centuries afterthe year 1000 the herring made its appearance chiefly in the East Baltic ; then itshowed a preference for the shores of Scania down to the middle of the sixteenthcentury, after which the principal fishing stations were those of the North Sea,along the sandy shores and cliffs of Scotland and Norway. Lastly, the herringappeared in great numbers on the west coast of Sweden, in the Kattegat. Butnotwithstanding all these shiftings it is not a migrating fish, as was formerlysupposed. It haunts the deep oceanic valleys, whence it rises towards the coaststo deposit its spawn. Naturalists have also ascertained that it cannot live inwaters of a lower temperature than 38° Fahr.,t so that the fishermen nowknow that when they enter a colder zone they will find no herrings there.Experts are also able to distinguish the various species, and to say whetherthey came from the Scotch or Norwegian shores, from the Baltic or GermanOcean.* " La Mcr."t A. Boeck, Van Beneden, &c.