Harengus, in Icthyology, a species of the Clopea. Its Harengi forms are
these: its length is generally seven or eight inches, though it sometimes
grows to a foot; its head is flatted, and its mouth placed upwards: it
has a green back and sides mingled with blue, and a belly of a silver
cast; its scales are large and round. It is not spotted at all, and its
belly is carinated; the ridge is quite smooth, and not at all serrated;
its side lines are small, and scarce distinguishable; the lower jaw is
stronger and more prominent than the upper; its gills are four in number,
as in other fishes; their fibres very long, and open remarkably wide; so
that this fish dies almost as soon as taken out of the water: it has one
fin on its back, which consists of about seventeen rays, and is between
the head and the tail; the two ventral fins have nine rays, the pectoral
seventeen, and the anal fourteen; the tail is forked. The name Herring,
takes its derivation from the German _Heer_, an army, which expresses
their number when they migrate our seas. Herrings are found in vast
quantities from the highest northern latitudes as low as the northern
coast in France; on the coast of America large shoals of them are to be
met with as low as Carolina. In Kamtschatka they are also to be found,
and very possibly in Japan: their winter rendezvous is within the arctic
circle; they retire there after spawning, and wherever they can meet with
insect food. They are in full roe at the end of June, and in perfection
till the commencement of winter, when they begin to deposit their spawn.
PRESERVED HERRINGS.
Various are the names given to them, and according as they are ordered:
as,
1st. SEA-STICKS are what are caught all the fishing season, and but
once packed. A barrel of these contains six or eight hundred; according
to law, eight barrels go to the hundred. A hundred of Herrings is one
hundred and twenty; a last is ten thousand; and they generally reckon
fourteen barrels to the last.
2d. REPACKED HERRINGS are Herrings repacked on shore. Seventeen barrels
of Sea-Sticks make from twelve to fourteen barrels of repacked Herrings.
They repack them in the following manner: take out the Herrings, wash
them in their own pickle, and lay them orderly in a fresh barrel: they
have no salt put to them; but after being close packed, have a sworn
copper put over them with the pickle when the barrel is half full: the
pickle is brine; so strong that the herring may swim in it.
3d. SUMMERS are what are caught by the Dutch Chasers, or Divers, from
June till the middle of July. They are sold in Sea-Sticks; they will not
endure repacking: they go one with another full and shotten; but the
repacked Herrings are sorted.
4th. The SICK and SHOTTEN HERRINGS by themselves; the barrel should be
marked.
5th. CRUSS HERRINGS are what are caught after the middle of September;
they are cured with salt upon Salt: all these are full Herrings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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