276 NEW-YORK FAUNA. 



lowing facts : In the year 1836, five hundred and sixty-one vessels w^ere employed from ten 

 towns along the coast of Massachusetts, having crews amounting to three thousand eight 

 hundred and sixteen men. In the following season, 510,554 quintals were taken, producing 

 the sum of $1,569,517. At the rate of thirty-five hundred fish to one hundred quintals, which 

 is the usual average, some idea may be formed of the number annually taken. From the 

 Register's office, Tonnage Bureau, we learn that in 1840, the tonnage of all the vessels en- 

 gaged in the cod fisheries amounted to 76,025 tons, which, at the usual rate of six men to 

 twenty-five tons, would give us a total of more than eighteen thousand men and boys employed 

 in the fishing business alone.* 



The taking of the American Cod is carried on in small open boats and schooners, along 

 the northern coast, and afi'ords occupation to thousands, supplying our markets at all seasons 

 with fresh fish, which commonly sells at four cents per pound. From the liver not only of 

 this species, but of others of the same family, as well as from sharks and mackerel, an oil is 

 obtained, by exposing it to putrefaction in the sun, which is highly prized by the leather- 

 dressers, and sells for fifteen dollars per barrel. 



Several species of this family have been successfully reared (we can scarcely say domesti- 

 cated) by a person in the neighborhood of Edinburgh. He has a salt-water pond about thirty 

 feet in width by two hundred in length, communicating with the sea, and allowing a free pas- 

 sage to the tide through an iron grating. They are fed with smaller fishes, and with the in- 

 testines of sheep, which the cod is observed to devour with great avidity, and to fatten in a 

 short space of time. 



The American cod is exceedingly voracious. It attacks indiscriminately every thing in its 

 way, devouring smaller fish, Crustacea and marine shell-fish. Its stomach is in fact the great 

 repository from which has lately been obtained so many rare and undescribed species of shells, 

 inhabiting deep water, and which are unattainable by any other means. 



Its geographical range appears to be from the coast of New- York, northwardly. 



* At the same Bureau, we were furnished with the following table of tonnage for 1840 : 



TONS. 



Vessels in the Cod fishery 76,025.65 



Ditto in the Mackerel fishery 28,267.19 



Ditto in the Whale fishery 136,926.64 



Total 251.219.48 



