Opisthomi and Anacanthini 741 
Nathaniel Atwood of Provincetown records one with the weight 
of 160 pounds. 
“The cod ranks among the most voracious of ordinary 
fishes, and almost everything that is eatable, and some that 
is not, may find its way into its capacious maw.” 
“The codfish in its mode of reproduction exhibits some 
interesting peculiarities. It does not come on the coast to 
spawn, as was once supposed, but its eggs are deposited in mid- 
sea and float to the surface, although it does really, in many 
cases, approach the land to do so. Prof. C. O. Sars, who has 
discovered its peculiarities, ‘found cod at a distance of twenty 
to thirty Norwegian miles from the shore and at a depth of 
from one hundred to one hundred and fifty fathoms.’ The 
eggs thus confided to the mercy of the waves are very numerous; 
as many as 9,100,000 have been calculated in a seventy-five- 
pound fish. ‘When the eggs are first seen in the fish they are 
so small as to be hardly distinguishable; but they continue 
to increase in size until maturity, and after impregnation have 
a diameter depending upon the size of the parent, varying 
from one-nineteenth to one-seventeenth of an inch. A five- 
to eight-pound fish has eggs of the smaller size, while a twenty- 
five-pound one has them between an eighteenth and a seven- 
teenth.’ There are about 190,000 eggs of the smaller size to 
a pound avoirdupois. They are matured and ejected from Sep- 
tember to November.” 
Unlike most fishes, the cod spawns in cooling water, a trait 
also found in the salmon family. 
The liver of the cod yields an easily digested oil of great 
value in the medical treatment of diseases causing emaciation. 
The Alaska cod, Gadus macrocephalus, is equally abundant 
with the Atlantic species, from which it differs very slightly, 
the air-bladder or sounds being smaller, according to the fisher- 
men, and the head being somewhat larger. This species is found 
from Cape Flattery to Hakodate in Japan, and is very abundant 
about the Aleutian Islands and especially in the Okhotsk Sea. 
With equal markets it would be as important commercially 
as the Atlantic cod. In the codfish (Gadus) and related genera 
there are three dorsal and two anal fins. In the codfish the 
lateral line is pale and the lower jaw shorter than the upper. 
