288 LABRADOR 



mankind. I have myself taken three small cod and twenty- 

 seven caplin from the stomach of one postprandial fish 

 and have seen an excellent gold ring taken from the stomach 

 of another. A book in three volumes was taken from the 

 stomach of a codfish off Lynn, England, and presented to 

 the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University. Scissors, 

 oil-cans, old boots, testify to the catholicity of the cod's 

 appetite. Captain Hill, who lost his keys over the side in 

 the North Sea, had them returned to him from the inside of 

 a codfish. Two full-grown ducks have been found in a 

 cod's stomach ; the birds were quite fresh, and had appar- 

 ently been swallowed alive. An entire partridge, a whole 

 hare, six (small) dogfish, an entire turnip, a guillemot 

 (beak, claws, and all), a tallow candle, have all betrayed 

 the omnivorous leanings of some of our friends. But per- 

 haps their devotion to business is best shown by the number 

 of stones taken from their interiors and merely swallowed 

 for the sake of the corallines which had grown on the stones. 

 Lobsters, crabs, whelk shells, and the like, swallowed au 

 naturelle do not seem to require any special digestive pre- 

 cautions. A Newfoundland fisherman had the melancholy 

 duty of forwarding a wedding-ring found in a cod's stomach 

 to the family of a lady who was lost off the Newfoundland 

 coast in the steamship Anglo-Saxon. 



The question whether there is any diminution in the 

 supply of the cod on the Labrador is an interesting and 

 important one. If it be granted that there is such diminu- 

 tion, it is still an open question whether man has been re- 

 sponsible for the change. All the millions of fish taken 

 annually out of these waters must represent but an ex- 

 tremely minute fraction of the total "run" along the 



