There are several interesting kinds of Herring, but we will first look
at the one we know so well, which is such good food, either fresh or as
dried "kipper" or "bloater."

The Herring loves to swim in a _shoal_. From the time he leaves the egg,
during his babyhood, and all through his life, he explores the sea with
thousands of other Herrings crowded round him. His name is from a
foreign word--_heer_ or _herr_, an _army_. His enemies--ourselves among
them--find this habit of his a good one. It makes him such easy prey.

Here is a dense shoal of fish, moving slowly along near the surface. To
catch some is quite easy. The Dolphin, or Shark, or other large
fish-hunter, merely has to rush into their ranks with wide-open mouth.
Hordes of Dog-fish feast on the edges of the shoal. And Gannets,
Cormorants, Gulls and other sea-birds can take their fill with ease.

The Herring shoal is a banquet at which the fish-eating sea creatures
feed heartily, and man comes along, to spread his nets in the path of
the shoal. But what matter a few million Herrings when the sea is packed
with billions more! In the North Sea, one shoal was seen which was over
four miles long and two miles wide. In such a mass there would be, at
the very least, twenty thousand million Herring; and this shoal was but
one out of many thousand shoals. One might as well try to count the
grains of sand on the shore as the Herrings in the wide ocean.

These huge shoals do not stay long in one part of the sea. They make
journeys of many miles, each shoal seeming to keep to itself. Like every
other creature, the Herring goes where his food is. What food does he
find? He swallows the small life of the sea, tiny transparent things
like baby shrimps, prawns, crabs, and so on, which swarm even in the