cold water which the Herring loves.

They are good juicy food, these little mites, and very plentiful; so no
wonder the Herring becomes plump. He eats greedily of this good food.
For instance, a young Herring, picked up on the beach at Yarmouth, was
found to contain no less than one hundred and forty-three small shrimps.
Not a bad dinner for a fish the length of this page! The ocean teems
with small creatures; even the huge Greenland Whale feeds on them, and
the Herring seems to live on little else.

Well, the shoals of Herring begin to move from their feeding place in
the deeps, and come nearer the coast. As they get to shallower water
they are crowded together near the surface. Where are they going, and
why?

Perhaps you can guess--they seek warmer, shallower water, in which to
lay their eggs. Now is the time for the fisherman! If the Herring kept
to the deep they would be quite safe--and we should have no nice plump
Herrings on our breakfast tables! Yes, now is the time to spread out
miles of nets in the path of this living mass of silvery fish. They are
in fine condition, well fed, and ready to lay their eggs.

They are moving slowly but surely towards the right place where those
eggs should be laid. What guides them? Why do they go _this_ way and not
_that_ in the vast ocean? We do not really know what guides them; so we
say that they obey a wonderful, unfailing guide--"instinct."

Of course you have seen and tasted the "hard" roe of a Herring; but I do
not suppose you have ever troubled to count all those little round eggs.
Each roe contains some thirty thousand of them! What a huge number of