506 SUPPLEMENT ON 



juices is so great that in less than six hours the prey which 

 it has swallowed has undergone all the elaboration necessary 

 to complete the act of digestion ; under their influence the 

 shell of the crab grows red, just as it does under the action 

 of boiling water, and that even before the flesh is reduced 

 into chyme. Its gluttony, moreover, is so great, that it will 

 devour the young of its own species, swallow pieces of wood, 

 or other substances, which cannot contribute to its nourish- 

 ment, but which it has the singular faculty of rejecting in the 

 same manner as the squali and vultures do, when it is incom- 

 moded by their presence in its viscera. 



The growth of this fish appears to be particularly rapid, 

 though the degrees of its progression are not ascertained. It 

 dies the moment it is taken out of its natural element. It 

 frequents the salt water alone, and remains habitually in the 

 depths of the sea, never ascending into rivers, nor even gene- 

 rally approaching the shores, except in the spawning seasons. 

 It is particularly met with in that part of the Northern At- 

 lantic comprehended between the fortieth and the sixty- sixth 

 degree of latitude. It is not an inhabitant of the Mediter- 

 ranean or other interior seas whose entrance is nearer to the 

 equator than the fortieth degree. 



The cod is taken in the seas of Greenland, Iceland, Nor- 

 way, Denmark, Russia, Sweden, and Prussia ; in the Channel 

 to the east and north of England, Scotland, and Ireland, near 

 the Orkneys, New England, Cape Breton, &c, but more espe- 

 cially at Newfoundland, where, in a sort of sub-marine moun- 

 tain, which, at the depth of sixty and even a hundred feet 

 below the surface of the ocean, occupies an extent of more 

 than a hundred leagues in length and sixty in breadth, there 

 is always an astonishing assemblage of these animals. Three 

 or four hundred of them may be taken in a day, with no other 

 trouble to the fisher than that of continually dropping and 

 drawing up his line. 

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