LETTER FROM W. T. GRENFELL, ESQ. 145 
and dried in the sun, and then sent to Mediterranean, English, or 
Brazilian markets. 
The people are a fine, tall, well-built race, brave to fool-hardiness, 
and generous and hospitable to a fault. Accidents and sickness are 
by no means uncommon ; I have always found the people dividing 
up orphaned children among themselves, and even Esquimaux 
rearing the orphans of English settlers. 
They experienced this year epidemics of diphtheria and influenza, 
the people dying in many parts without any possibility of getting 
medical assistance. No doctor resides anywhere on the coast. 
Their hospitality to one another in the winter, when all the 
country is cut off from the civilised world, brings them occasionally 
to the verge of starvation. 
The causes leading to the summer migration are :—(1) The decline 
of the Bank Fishery and the French and Canadian bounties; (2) the 
depletion of the inshore cod and lobster fisheries ; (8) the monopoly 
of the winter seal fishery by the large steamers of the merchants’ 
firms ; (4) the crippling of any development of agriculture or mining 
by the French treaty rights on the shore. It is interesting to note 
that not more than 500 Frenchmen find it worth their while to fish 
in summer on the Newfoundland coast, and yet to preserve that 
exclusive right the only possible resource, in the case of the failure 
of the fisheries, is entirely destroyed in this, our oldest British 
colony. 
The following is a summary from Mr, Nielsen’s report. First of 
all, he shows from his Norwegian experiences that codfish do seek 
waters of a certain temperature ; (2) that these temperatures can be 
ascertained ; (3) that by the use of deep-sea thermometers more 
successful fishing can be ensured than by haphazard work ; (4) that 
the fishermen in the Lofoden Islands have used these instruments 
with great success; (5) that codfish in different countries learn 
to endure different temperatures within certain limits; (6) that 
cod thrive between 34° and 52° F., that outside these limits 
they get drowsy and stop feeding, but do not necessarily lose in 
condition or flesh; (7) that cod quickly perish from cold when the 
temperature sinks below 31° F. Moreover fishermen on the coast 
said that they could have filled their nets and vessels with codfish in 
this stunned condition at some places off the Labrador coast if they 
had had a cod seine, and at the same time they lost their 
summer’s “fare”? of fish, because the cod would not feed. At 
times in the stomach of these fish lumps of ice are found, probably 
frozen after death. Mr. Nielsen sums up as follows :—‘‘ The 
meteorological condition of the waters has a most effective influence 
upon the habits and movements of the fish and bait, and is a very 
