94 THE OCTOPUS. 



Mr. Y. does not know. All parts of the squid are cut up, 



and used as bait ; what is not required the next day is thrown 

 away or given to the pigs. In the northern district, between 

 Cape Freels and Cape St. John, the fishing spots are at Robin's 

 Cave Head, and Friday's Bay, on the anchorage ground. The 

 fishing takes place about sun-down. The squid is of an oval form, 

 and resembles somewhat our cuttle-fish, but it has no solid bone. 

 The length of the body is from eight inches to a foot, and it is 

 about two inches in diameter. The flesh is said by the fishermen 

 to be remarkably sweet and good eating, and to be excellent 

 fried. About the end of September the squid disappears, and 

 herring are then again caught : thus herring forms the bait for the 

 fishery at the commencement and end of the fishing season. Mr. 



E beheves that the squid is caught and used for bait all 



round Newfoundland, but he can only speak with certainty of the 

 northern district." 



I learn from other sources that the same mode of fishing is 

 followed in other parts of Newfoundland, and that hundreds of 

 boats are engaged during September in "jigging;" a crew of 

 three men usually taking ff©m one hundred to five hundred in a 

 day.. The squids come into the bays in such vast shoals that 

 sometimes, during violent gales, hundreds of tons of them are 

 thrown up together in beds on the flat beaches, and their decay 

 spreads an intolerable effluvium around.'' 



The Greek fishermen use, as a "jigger," the bone of the Sepia 

 surrounded with hooks, believing it to be more attractive than the 

 leaden weight above described. 



""■ A gentleman engaged in the cod fishery, and residing at Fogo, New- 

 foundland, has told me that he was startled one evening by an unusual sound 

 at the back of his house, which is at the head of the harbour, and the next 

 morning found three barrels of squids dead on the shore. The same gentleman 

 received infoniiation, on the 29th of June, 1873, of a gigantic squid having 

 been picked up in Trinity Bay, and seen by Mr. Haddon, school inspector. 

 It measured sixteen feet in length. The squid used so abundantly as bait in the 

 Newfoundland cod-fishery is Ommastrephes sagittatus. 



