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The Age of a Herring

Abstract

THE very remarkable conclusions which Dr. Johan Hjort has drawn from his study of the scales of herrings are discussed, over well-known initials, in NATURE of Aigust 27. Your contributor is evidently convinced of the truth of Dr. Hjort's deductions, and this opinion is shared, I believe, by very nearly all those biologists who make a study of fishery questions. Nevertheless, even in face of this general consensus of opinion, I am unable to persuade myself (on the evidence at present in hand) of the validity of Dr. Hjort's conclusions. The leading statements made by Dr. Hjort and his friends are these:—(1) That the age of each individual herring, or the year in which it was born, is at once made known by the number of rings upon its scales; (2) that, ipso facto, the shoal can be at once analysed into its component “year-classes”; and (3) that herring spawned in 1904 (according to such evidence) were so prodigiously numerous that year after year they have seemed to dominate the Norwegian herring-catch, and have constituted from 77 per cent. to 54 per cent. of all the Norwegian “spring herring” during at least the five years from 1910 to 1914.

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THOMPSON, D. The Age of a Herring. Nature 94, 60–61 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094060a0

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