The herring is found under four different conditions:—1st, Fry or sill; 2d, _Maties_ or fat herring; 3d, Full herring; 4th, Shotten or spent herring. All herrings under five or six inches in length come under the first denomination. The _matie_ is the finest condition in which a herring can be used for food purposes; and if the fishery could be so arranged, that is the time at which it should be caught for consumption. At that period it is very fat, its feeding-power being all developed on its body; the spawn is small, the growth of the roe or milt not having yet demanded the whole of the nutriment taken by the fish. A full herring is one in which the milt or roe is fully developed. The _maties_ develop into spawning herring with great rapidity—in the course of three months, it is said. The herrings at the spawning season come together in vast numbers, and proceed to their spawning places in the shallower and consequently warmer parts of the sea. As Gilbert White says, “the two great motives which regulate the brute creation are love and hunger; the one incites them to perpetuate their kind, the latter induces them to preserve individuals.” In obedience to these laws the herring congregate on our coast, for there only they find an abundant supply of food to mature with the necessary rapidity their milt and roe, as well as a sea-bottom fitted to receive their spawn; and they are thus brought within the reach of man at what many persons consider the wrong time of their life. As to this division of the question, it has been said that it matters not at what period you take a herring, whether it be old or young, without or with spawn; that fish cannot again be caught, and will never spawn again; and it is argued, therefore, that the taking of fish in “the family way” no more prevents it from reproducing than if it had been killed in the condition of a _matie_. The same argument was used in the case of the young salmon; and it was asked: If you kill all your grilse, where are you to find your salmon? but I shall have more to say on this part of my topic by and by.