COD, POLL O CK, HADD O CK AND HAKE. 3 43 



trawl was used, thus leaving the bait motionless on the bottom for hours 

 at a time, they were induced to bite, and many were taken with the eggs 

 running from them. Ripe males seemed to bite readily at any time. 



" The young fish, as has been remarked, seems to spend the first three 

 or four years of its life in shoal water, among the rocks and algre. Here 

 its food consists at first of the minutest forms, and later principally of 

 small Crustacea, though it often picks up raollusks and w^orms, and even 

 enters the harbors in summer, where it remains about the wharves, pick- 

 ing up bits of refuse thrown from the fish-houses." 



Capt. R. H. Hurlbert tells me that sometimes a school of Codfish will 

 bite at night ; these the fishermen call " Night Cod." 



In i860 the schooner '' C. C. Davis" caught one entire trip of fish 

 on George's Bank all in the night, and there are other instances on record, 

 though, as a rule, these fish feed only in the daytime. 



The Cod is one of the most prolific of the ocean fishes, and we find not 

 only thousands but millions of eggs in a single female. All members of 

 this family contain large number of eggs, but the Codfish is the most pro- 

 lific of all. Mr. Earll writes as follows : 



" The exact number of eggs in a female varies greatly with the individual, 

 being dependent largely upon its size and age. To ascertain the number 

 for the different sizes, a series of six fish, representing various stages of 

 growth from twenty-one to seventy-five pounds, was taken, and the eggs 

 were estimated. Care was exercised that the series should contain only 

 immature females, so that no egg should have been lost, and that all 

 might be of nearly equal size. The ovaries were taken from the fish and 

 their weight accurately ascertained ; after which small quantities were 

 taken from different parts of each and weighed on delicately adjusted 

 scales, the eggs in these portions being carefully counted. The number 

 contained in a given weight being known, it w^as easy to determine 

 approximately the entire number for each fish." 



" The results obtained are given in a table, quoted below, showing a 

 twenty-one pound fish to have 2,700,000, and a seventy-five pound one, 

 9,100,000. The largest number of eggs found in the Pollock was 4,029- 

 200, and in the Haddock, 1,840,000. 



" When the eggs are first seen in the fish they are so small as to be hardly 

 distinguishable, but they continue to increase in size until maturity, and, 

 after impregnation, have a diameter, depending upon the size of the 

 parent, varying from one-nineteenth to one-seventeenth of an inch. A 



