COD, HADDOCKS, WHITING, BREAM, ETC 419 



under him, and he was lifted into the boat. He was a fine 

 big, fat cod, and from his mouth dangled a snooding made of 

 six or seven horsehairs twisted. When the cook at the lodge 

 cut him open that night she found on the end of the said 

 snooding a hook, and on the hook a good-sized haddock. This 

 greedy fish had evidently lifted the haddock from one of the 

 crofters' lines, swallowed it, broken off the horsehair snooding, 

 and, thinking nothing of the incident, swam slowly under our 

 boat, saw my piece of haddock, and took it. 



But this is nothing to what cod do sometimes. It has been 

 said nay, more, put in print that a partridge was once taken 

 from the stomach of such a fish, while others have been caught 

 containing hares and white turnips. But the most eccentric 

 cod I ever heard of was one which was brought to the Vice- 

 Chancellor of Cambridge somewhere about Midsummer's Eve 

 in the year 1626. He had been caught in Lynn Deeps, and 

 from his maw was taken ' a booke in three treatises.' To the 

 naturalist the cod is of even greater value than to the bibliophile, 

 rendering up from his capacious stomach an immense variety 

 of rare and sometimes beautiful marine creatures, which the 

 trawl usually maims or destroys. 



Cod are in first-rate condition for the two or three months 

 previous to the time they spawn, the date of which varies 

 in different places from January to late in the spring. On 

 most parts of our coast the longshore cod fishery of the sea 

 angler begins in September or October. On the east coast of 

 England and Scotland immense shoals of small codling make 

 their appearance at the end of summer. These may be only 

 half-pounders or pounders. A fortnight or so later fish of two 

 pounds will be caught, while about Christmas and onwards 

 large cod will be found foraging for food within a hundred 

 yards of the shore. It should be understood that this statement 

 of time and size of fish is to be taken as a very general one, for 



