COD, POLLOCK, HADDOCK AND HAKE. 335 



I have before me the statements of nearly a hundred observers whic li I 

 hope to discuss more fully at some future time. Their opinions confirm, 

 in a very striking manner, the generalization just stated. They show that 

 while on the coast of Maine the Cod leave the immediate shores in the 

 autumn, not reappearing in any considerable numbers until late in the 

 following spring, south of Cape Cod they approach the shore only in the 

 winter season, while during the summer they keep out in the cold Labra- 

 bor current, which extends south to the inside of the current of the Gulf 

 stream. In Vineyard Sound, Buzzard's Bay, and off the shores of 

 Connecticut, New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and even in Eastern 

 A^irginia, there is excellent fishing during the winter season. " A wise 

 provision of nature," remarks Prof. Baird, "in the absence of so many 

 species that supply food during the summer." 



It will probably be found that fishing in deeper wate/ in these same 

 regions in summer will bring to light an abundance of Cod. 



In Norway they are caught, to some extent, in the fiords in the summer 

 season, though more are caught in winter, while in summer great numbers 

 of them still remain on the off-shore banks. 



From Prof. Hind's pen the following paragraphs are taken : 



" When the coasts of Finmark are thronged with fishermen catching 

 their fares of the " Lodde,' or summer Cod, the shores of Northeast New- 

 foundland and the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence are alive with 

 fishermen successfully capturing the same variety of fish in British 

 American waters ; and when the Russian on the Murmanian coast is laying 

 in his winter stock of Cod, and accumulating a large overplus for a foreign 

 market, the New Foundlander and the Labradorian are securing their 

 fares at the Moravian missionary stations, Okak and Nain. So, also, in 

 the North Sea and on the coast of the British Isles, around the Faroe 

 Islands, all along the Icelandic shores, on the south coast of Greenland, 

 off Arksut Fiord, away up north to Torske Banks, and down the Atlantic 

 coast of America to over the Grand Banks, and as far as, and even beyond, 

 St. George's Shoal, the Cod is taken simultaneously and in great 

 abundance. 



"Local variations of days, and even weeks, occur in a coast line or 

 stretch of shallow sea of not more than one hundred miles in length ; but 

 these arise from the one great leading cause which guides the Cod in its 

 approach to known feeding grounds on the coast or known banks at sea. 

 This leading cause is temperature, which determines the movement towards 

 the coast of the various forms of marine life on which the Cod, inhabiting 

 different waters, is accustomed to feed. • • • The Cod, caught on 



