103 



[Atwood. 



of foi-mation and occurrence, and the geological position 

 of rocks beaiing it. 



Captain X. E. Atwood addressed the meeting upon some 

 points in the history of the Cod. 



No other fish, said he, has so wide a geographical range. He had 

 taken three specimens twenty miles north of Cape Hatteras, and here 

 he believed its southern limits terminated. Northward, however, it ex- 

 tends almost indefinitely, and may be found on all the shoal banks ; 

 and the question naturally arises whether it is one and the same spe- 

 cies which exists all along this eastern coast. The species found on the 

 western coast of Europe has been called Morrhua vulgaris, and that on 

 our coast, that is, off Massachusetts and New York, has been consid- 

 ered by Storer and others as distinct, and given the name of M. ameri- 

 caria. The species which occurs off the shores of the British Provinces 

 is doubtful. Perley has called that found near the shore M. americana, 

 while he considers the off-shore species the M. vulgaris of Europe. 



The cod varies much as to size, some times growing to very large 

 dimensions. Yarrell says the largest one he knew of weighed sixty 

 pounds. Pennant gives an account of one which weighed seventy- 

 eight pounds. Captain Atwood had seen one at Provincetown which 

 weighed one hundred and a half pounds. On the banks of Newfound- 

 land their average size is such that it takes thirty-five to forty-five fish 

 to weigh one hundred and twelve pounds, when dried, and the largest 

 never weigh more than thirty or forty pounds ; when taken on Ban- 

 quereau and Sable Island Banks, they are smaller, and four or five 

 more fish would be required for the hundred weight. At George's and 

 Brown's Banks, on the other hand, they are larger, and sometimes of 

 extreme size, and no small ones with them, so that the average num- 

 ber required to make the same weight is only fifteen to eighteen, while 

 again in the common fisheries of the Gulf of St. Lawrence it takes as 

 many as seventy or eighty, and up to the time when the fish were 

 taken by " trawling " very few large ones were caught. Since then 

 very large ones, so large as to only require three or four to the hun- 

 dred weight, when dried, have been taken from the same places. 

 Captain Atwood was unable to say whether these belonged to two 

 species or were the old and young of one. 



From the Straits of Belle Isle to Anticosti, the fish are of a consid- 

 erably uniform size, never weighing more than twenty or at the most 

 twenty-five pounds, and the average requiring one hundred or one 

 hundred and twelve pounds to the hundred weight, when dried, being 

 thus smaller than anywhere along the whole coast. At Bradore. how- 

 ever, there is a small bank five miles from shore, where larger fish are 

 found than even at the Grand Banks, and the same is true of other 



