COD. 59 



at some distant date as the resort of fish, than more lately, 

 down to the time of its renewed discovery. In the meanwhile 

 the fish has had time to grow, as well in size as numbers, so 

 that wonders are told of the success of the first adventurers to 

 the spot; from which two boats returned after a week's 

 fishing, each with between thirteen and fourteen tons of fish. 

 The size of the individual Cods is not mentioned, but as a 

 single example was known to have lived in an enclosed pond 

 at Logan, in Scotland, to the supposed age of about fifteen 

 years, during which it is said to have made a gradual increase 

 in bulk, we may judge that those taken at Rockall, at freedom 

 and fully fed, had attained to the full of that which at any 

 time they reach. A successful fisherman on the banks of 

 Newfoundland informed me that out of many hundreds he once 

 caught there, there was a Cod which reached to a hundredv>'eiglit, 

 and that with a wish to show it to his friends at home, he 

 purchased it of his captain for the price of half-a-crown. The 

 largest Cod I have known weighed fifty-six pounds; but 

 scarcely any are in finer condition than those which abound in 

 the deeper water between the Sciliy Islands and the west coast 

 of Cornwall, and also between St. Ives on the north and the 

 Mount's Bay. 



The fishery for Cods is conducted with hooks, and either 

 with a single line from the boat, (each fisherman attending to 

 a couple,) or with long lines, which in the west of England 

 are termed bulteys, or bulters, and Avhich cannot be shot in 

 such deep water as may admit the single line. These bulteys are 

 formed of a j)rincipal line, which is a stout cord or small 

 rope, and to which is fastened a series of short lines .about a 

 fathom in length, placed at such distances from one another 

 as that they shall not be entangled together. Sometimes many 

 hundreds of these hooks are thus fastened together, with a 

 stone or grapnel to moor them, and with a cork-line to mark 

 the place and draw them up. The baits are various, — as 

 Herrings, Pilchards, and Lamperns; and the direction is across 

 the course of the tide, on ground where the hooks are not 

 likely to get entangled amidst the rocks. The whole is drawn 

 up at such a time as experience has taught the fishermen to 

 be sufficient for their purpose. If left long after the fish are 

 dead they are subject to the depredations of some of the 

 sessile-eyed crustacean animals, termed bv- fishermen sea lice; 



