304 LABRADOR 



drawbacks. It involves both great risks and great per- 

 sonal exposure. It allows so many wounded fish to escape 

 that it is prohibited altogether along many sections of the 

 coast. This prohibition is accomplished by getting local 

 laws sanctioned by the Legislature and included in the 

 annual " Fishery Laws." In one place it was enforced by the 

 residents at the end of their long guns ; as they say, " As well 

 be hung as starve." Oddly enough, at the opposite side 

 of the sandy beach where they live, hand-lining has been 

 ruined by west-coast boats with bultows, and the people 

 who live there have, in consequence, fallen on very evil 

 times. 



For this purpose the bottom beam and other trawls of 

 the old country were found useless. Quite recently the 

 enterprising firm of Bowring Brothers purchased a modern 

 steam trawler, and tried all around the coast and islands, 

 but met with so little success that the attempt has been 

 abandoned. Gill-nets, which came next, are but little 

 used for cod. Cod seem ordinarily too lazy in disposition 

 even to put their heads hard enough into a mesh to be 

 caught. This is, of course, very unlike the more agile 

 salmon and trout. The large-mesh cod net, however, 

 anchored on the bottom, still has its advocates, and at times 

 many cod become entangled in the leaders of the trap-nets. 



The advent of the large seine-nets marked a very material 

 advance in the rapidity with which the fish could be taken, 

 and it is still at certain times and places the most success- 

 ful method known. The net itself is an expensive affair. 

 It is on an average eighty feet deep and over seven hundred 

 feet in length. It has corks on the top to keep its upper 

 end on the surface and leads on the bottom to keep the 



