226 BULLETIN OF THE JNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



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15 pounds." Instances are not uncommon of black cod being taken 

 measuring 50 inches and weighing 30 pounds, but the average is much 

 less than this last. But it is the admitted rule that the deeper the 

 water the larger the fish. 



When discovered and its dis- 

 tribution. — Although I have the 

 credit of first introducing this fish in 

 a marketable shape to the public, 

 yet it has been known to the officers 

 and employees of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company for many years, but was 

 seldom seen on their tables; the enor- 

 mous quantities of salmon, eulachon, 

 herring, cod, halibut, and other fish, 

 easily and plentifully taken, made it 

 unnecessary to incur the trouble of 

 fishing in the deep water for the black 

 cod. The first I saw of them was 

 atfNeah Bay, Wash., at the entrance 

 to Fuca Strait, in 1859. An old In- 

 dian caught a few when fishing for 

 halibut. I procured one, which I 

 broiled, and found it equal to a No. 

 1 mackerel. 



They called it "beshowe," but the 

 white settlers, from want of a better 

 name, called it black cod. The true 

 cod, Gadus, is called by the Makah 

 Indians "cardatl." The kultus cod, 

 Ophiodon elongatus, they call "toosh- 

 kow." As the black cod are best in 

 water from SO to 100 fathoms, the 

 Makahs do not care to fish for them, 

 and when by accident they catch 

 any they ask one dollar apiece, and 

 do not care to part with them even 

 at that price. I have occasionally 

 seen the "beskowe" every summer 

 that I have been at Xeah Bay since 

 1859, bat I never have had an op- 

 portunity to get any quantity of 

 them till in September, 1883, while at 

 Skidgate, Queen Charlotte's Islands, 

 which 1 visited under instructions 

 from Professor Spencer F. Baird. I succeeded in procuring about 100 

 of these fish, which are called by the Haidah Indians " skil." These 



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The black cod (Anoplopoma fimbria). 



