78 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Scotia. The Scatari grounds and the Cape North Banks are continuous 
through Cabot Straits with@the Gulf Banks, these banks being 75 to 
110 fathoms deep, though cod-fishing is mainly confined to depths of 
25 to 40 or even 60 fathoms. ‘The Magdalen Islands form the eastern 
limit of fishing banks of great importance, while, to the north, Bryon 
Island and Bird Rocks are adjacent to splendid grounds, on which fish- 
ing is pursued in water from 14 to 24 fathoms deep. Immediately 
west is Bradelle Bank; Miscou, Orphan and Green Banks extending 
north to Gaspé. The Labrador Banks and.Anticosti may be said to 
skirt the eastern Quebec shores, and continue as the southern and 
northern Labrador fishing grounds. 
For three hundred years these extensive -grounds have 
been persistently fished, and during the last fifty years not 
less than one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five 
millions of cod-fish have, as Professor Hind estimated, been 
taken from these waters, yet they remain the most productive cod-fishing 
areas known. 
Most of the early popular writers included observations upon the 
natural history of the land:' but the waters are usually dismissed in 
curt fashion, as Zadok Thompson in one of the earliest Canadian 
Geographies in English, published in Canada, (at Stanstead, 
1835), says “The waters of Lower Canada contain a very. 
great variety of fishes. In the lower part of the St. Lawrence 
are found most of the fishes which are common to the ocean 
on this part of the continent, together with whales, seals, sea-cows, 
porpoises, ete. Most of the lakes and rivers abound in fishes, among the 
most important of which are sturgeon, salmon, salmon trout, shad, bass, 
pike, pickerel, eel, maskilonge, perch, trout, sucker, etc.” while Alex. 
Monro, in his admirable little school compendium of the History, 
Geography, and Statistics of British North America, (Montreal, 1864), 
though he gives an excellent list of the birds, mammals and fishes, and 
a botanical list also, dismisses the invertebrates with few words 
enumerating “lobsters, oysters, clams, mussels, razor-fish, crabs, and 
shrimps, all of which are found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Lobsters 
are abundant along the whole coast-line of the Gulf. Oysters are 
plentiful on the north east coast of New Brunswick, and south west 
coast of Prince Edward Island, and other places in the Gulf.” 
Of course some early scientific research had, it is true, been carried 
on in the waters of Canada, and Dr. Whiteaves has summarised the work 
done in his introduction to his catalogue of the Marine Invertebrata of 


1P, H. Gosse’s valuable little work, “ The Canadian Naturalist,’ London, 
1840, makes merely one or two incidental references to aquatic animals and 
fishes. 
