THE COD FISHERIES NEAR THE LOFFODEN ISLANDS. G05 



ities. I therefore coutinued my liiie-fishiiif,^ for some time iu dillercut 

 places, and whenever the conditions \yere the same as when 1 first com- 

 menced this kind of fishing, I invariably caught large numbers offish. 



I delayed my departure until I had obtained some of the eggs, which at 

 this time (beginning of March) were floating about everywhere, eggs 

 which had been laid by the large schools of spawning codfish which had 

 now come near the coast ; and until I had artificially hatched some of the 

 small, almost microscopic young fish, which during a former year had 

 formed the starting-point of my investigations. I had thus, step by 

 step, followed the young fish for a whole year during the different phases 

 of its development and had thus finished one of the first and most im- 

 portant, and at any rate least known, chapters in the natural history of 

 the winter-codfish. Further investigations of the growing codfish I had 

 to defer till another year, as I had staid long beyond the time I had 

 set myself. 



During the time when I made the observations which I have briefly 

 described in the foregoing, viz, during winter, the grown winter-codfish 

 had come near the Loffoden Islands at the usual time, and had given 

 plenty of employment to all the fishermen. The largest fisheries were 

 going on at the very place where I had stationed myself, viz, Skraaven, 

 so that for some time people almost waded in fish, liver, and roe. 



Although a study of the cod fisheries themselves was not included iu 

 my j)lan for this year, as my time was too much occupied with the in- 

 vestigation of the development of the young fish, I nevertheless resolved 

 not to miss the chance entirely of making some observations ou matters 

 which I thought might in some way be connected with my present in- 

 vestigation, and which formerly I had no chance of making, on account 

 of other questions which required my undivided attention. 



The first point was to examine those winter-codfish which came in 

 first, if possible from the contents of their stomachs, to reach some con- 

 clusion as to the places where these fish staid. Of the many winter- 

 codfish which I examined only very few had some inconsiderable rem- 

 nants of food in the lower portion of their stomach. From what I 

 found I concluded that their food consisted almost exclusively of her- 

 rings, and even in the greenish homogeneous mass contained in the 

 lower part of the entrails I discovered portions of the gills of the same 

 fish. In one stomach I found the whole backbone of a herring, which, 

 by its extraordinary length, proved it to have belonged to the large sea- 

 herring, which during the last years has during winter come near the 

 outer coast of the Loffoden Islands and Westeraalen in enormous num- 

 bers. Many reasons led me to the conclusion that the sameness in the 

 character of the food was not merely accidental during this year; and 

 it is my firm conviction that the principal food of the full-grown codfish 

 really consists of herrings and similar small fish. Its unusually bright 

 and shining color and its strongly-developed teeth indicate a genuine 

 fish of prey. I consider it, therefore, highly probable that the codfish 



