AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 3417 



known for a long time before. Enormous banks are Tocated there, and 

 I noted down their position and mapped them. 



Q. Do these banks extend all along the coast of Labrador, or are 

 they situated off that portion of the coast which you have visited f 

 A. They do not extend all along the coast. There is very deep water 

 indeed from Belle Isle to a place called Spotted Island, a distance up of 

 ninety miles, where there are no banks ; then you go up to Hamilton 

 Inlet, a distance of about sixty miles, where also there are no banks, 

 but when you get to Aillik Head, some forty miles beyond Hamilton 

 Inlet, then the banks commence and continue as far as Mugford, 170 

 miles up, and 1 was informed indefinitely along the coast. 



Q. As regards the floes of ice and icebergs which are brought down 

 by the Arctic current, have you any information to impart as respects 

 the diatoms, or animalcule, attached to them, -which form the food of 

 codfish ? A. Yes ; in this way : We always find the lowest forms of 

 vegetable life in the Arctic regions associated with the ice in vast pro- 

 fusion. They are described by those naturalists who have been in these 

 northern waters as completely covering the sea for hundreds of thou- 

 sands of square miles in the northern waters of Greenland seas and 

 Baffin's Bay j tens of thousands of square miles of these peculiar vege- 

 table forms were described by the officers of the Valorous, who went to 

 take provisions to the late Polar Expedition, under Captain Nares. I 

 have with me various descriptions of these animalcule, and of the 

 enormous extent to which they are developed ; I have also appended to 

 this paper here a note, by Dr. Robert Brown, describing the chain of 

 connection which exists between these minute diatoms, found in the 

 Arctic seas, and the food of all fish there up to the whale, and showing 

 the most minute connection between them, and also how it is that in 

 the northern seas many varieties offish, particularly such as the gigau- 

 tic basking shark, feed exclusively upon shrimps a variety of shrimps 

 which form the food of our mackerel and are specially provided with 

 suitable apparatus for it ; so it also is with the seal. 



Now, I have succeeded in getting a portion of the mouth fringe of a 

 shark about 35 feet long with a special apparatus which, in a single 

 moment as you can see, is wonderfully formed for the purpose of sift- 

 ing out these shrimps. The shark passes through the shrimps with his 

 mouth open, and his mouth is furnished with this peculiar kind of ap- 

 paratus. These teeth are designed to prevent its food from escaping. 

 The shrimp feed on the animalcule which feed on the diatoms. It is 

 also a circumstance worthy of mention, in order to show the enormous 

 range of the common squid, that in the northern waters the stomach of 

 the nar-wal is found filled with the beaks of the common squid. 



By Mr. Trescot : 



Q. How many of these appliances for the taking of food are found iu- 

 the mouth of the shark ? A. A succession of them are laid along 

 in it. 



Q. Are they placed transversely or parallel in the jaws !--A. They 

 move like gills. 



By Mr. Whiteway : 



Q. As regards the codtishery of Newfoundland, I believe you have 

 stated it is entirely inshore fishery ? A. As far as ray experience goes 

 it is exclusively an inshore fishery as now pursued by the Newfound- 

 landers. Perhaps on the south coast here and there during the winter 

 they may go beyond what is technically termed the three-mile limit.. 

 This is quite probable, but taking it altogether this fishery is pursued 



