176 HISTORY OF THE FISHES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



As well as the Bank fishers, our shore fishers preserve the livers of this species for 

 their oil. A good-sized cod liver yields half its weight of oil. Three barrels of livers 

 yield one barrel of oil ; almost all the remainder of the liver is water. A barrel of 

 cod oil is worth from eleven to fourteen dollars. The oil furnished by the cod upon our 

 coast is called shore oil, which is inferior to the Labrador or Bank oil. It is the habit of 

 our fishermen to mix the livers of all the fishes which furnish oil together, and sell 

 them for shore oil, — such as those of the pollock and hake, both of which furnish 

 more oil than the liver of the cod, and that of the haddock, which yields but little oil. 



Specimens of the cod are occasionally taken which are more or less mutilated ; and 

 sometimes, also, suffering from disease. The ventral or pectoral fins are lost. Captain 

 Atwood has seen a cod with an injured spine, causing a distortion of the head to one 

 side. Frequently specimens are caught much scarred, and with large sores upon their 

 surface. Sometimes the sore becomes very hard, the surrounding parts inflame, and 

 the fish emaciates ; or the gall-bladder becomes enlarged, and the bile hardened, so that 

 it can scarcely be cut with a knife. 



In the month of February, the cod leaves the vicinity of the land, and goes off into 

 deeper water. There are several varieties, differing in their color and markings, prob- 

 ably produced by difference of locality or food, which are known by the names of 

 " Rock-Cod," " Shoal-Cod," &c. 



The American cod grows to a very great size. Yarrell states that the largest cod of 

 which he has any record weighed sixty pounds. Pennant refers to one weighing 

 seventy-eight pounds. Captain Nathaniel Blanchard, of Lynn, has seen a cod weighing 

 eighty-six pounds. Mr. Jonathan Johnson, Jr., of Xahant, has seen one taken weighing 

 eighty-eight pounds. A cod weighing one hundred pounds and a half was taken at 

 Provincetown in the winter of 1816 - 47, by one of the crew of Captain Emery's fishing- 

 smack. The largest specimen of which I have any certain information, Mr. Anthony 

 Holbrook, fishmonger in Boston Market, assures me he saw caught, in the spring of 

 the year 1807, at New Ledge, sixty miles southeast of Portland, Maine ; it weighed 

 one hundred and seven pounds. Captain Atwood has heard of one said to weigh one 

 hundred and twelve pounds. 



In a Portland paper of September 13th, 1840, is an account, copied from the "Hal- 

 ifax Recorder," of a codfish exhibited in the fish-market at that place, measuring eight 

 feet three inches in length, and forty inches in circumference. 



