The form and consistency of its nose proves its use for the purpose of feeling, in the absence of the cirri or feelers possessed by other fishes. The skin not being provided with the _corpus papillæ_, and being besides covered with scales, it is supposed that the sensation of touch is either very limited or wholly wanting. The herring is provided with two nostrils; and from the perfection of the olfactory organ, it is presumed that its sense of smell is very acute. It has no external organs of hearing but a fringed orifice below the eye on the inner side of that part of the head which covers the gills. Fishermen affirm that their sense of hearing is very acute, and state instances of their immediately ceasing the peculiar pattering noise which they are accustomed to make on calm evenings, if a loud sound is made on any part of the interior of the boat. The Swedes attribute the departure of the herrings from the neighbourhood of Gothenburg to the frequent firing of the British ships of war which were stationed there for convoys; and so great is the influence which fishermen have been accustomed to attribute to sound, that we are told in Chambers’s Picture of Scotland that the bell of St Monance in Fife, which was suspended from a tree in the churchyard, was removed every year during the herring season, lest the noise should scare the fish from the coast. The mouth of the herring is furnished with a few teeth in the upper and lower jaws, and four rows in the tongue. These pointing inwards, enable it the more readily to secure and swallow its slippery prey, which chiefly consists of extremely minute animals, such as small medusæ, the _Oniscus marinus_, and small cancri and animalcula. The herrings on the coast of Norway sometimes feed upon a small red worm called the Roé-aal, which renders them unfit for curing; but there is probably no fish so indiscriminate in its food. The herring is often caught with flies, at which it leaps readily, and frequently with naked unbaited hooks. Mr Mitchell, in his article on the herring in the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, mentions that in the stomachs of several herrings which he examined, he found numbers of young sand-eels, and he adds a very curious observation, namely, that in the stomachs of such herrings as had the milt or roe small and immature, the sand-eels were numerous; whereas in those which had the milt or roe full grown, there were none whatsoever; but he offers no suggestion to account for this remarkable circumstance. They also frequently feed on their own ova and young.