FISH. 159 



these annual drains, and the constant attacks of larger fish, 

 is provided the fecundity of the herring, the spawn of each 

 female containing from thirty to forty thousand eggs. 



Who first salted herrings cannot be decided, some authori- 

 ties giving the honor of the invention to William Deukelzoon, 

 a fisherman of Dutch Flanders, who lived in the end of the 

 fourteenth century, others bestowing it upon William Benck- 

 els or Benkelings of Biervliet, over whose grave the Em- 

 peror Charles the Fifth is reported to have eaten a her- 

 ring, in token of his appreciation of the importance of the 

 invention. The smoking of herring was first undertaken at 

 Dieppe in Normandy. 



Hardly less valuable is the Codfish. It is found between 

 the fortieth and sixtieth degrees of north latitude, both in 

 the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, making its home on the 

 great shallows and sand-banks, of which the most celebrat- 

 ed is the great bank of Newfoundland. Towards the end 

 of winter or the beginning of spring, the codfish seeks the 

 coast to deposit its spawn. The codfish, with fewer enemies, 

 is still more productive than the herring, more than nine 

 millions of eggs having been discovered in a codfish of the 

 middle size. 



The Haddock belongs to the codfish genus. This fish as- 

 sembles in vast shoals during the winter months, in every 

 part of the Northern Ocean, forming banks sometimes twenty- 

 four miles long by three broad, and bending their course 

 generally southward, proceeding beyond the limits of the cod 

 and the herring ; but it has been remarked that they neither 

 enter the Baltic nor the Mediterranean. 



The Hake is also an inferior species of the codfish genus ; 

 it is known also under the name of Stock-fish, and " Poor 

 John." 



The Mackerel is another tribe of migratory fish. It frequents 

 the Arctic, Antarctic, and Mediterranean Seas, as well as the 



