156 BOOK OF NATURE LAID OPEN. 



exhaustible stoics of cartilaginous flat fish, which 

 furnish the labourer with his cheap repast. In 1806, 

 fiVe hundred and severity-seven ships, carrying about 

 64,667 tons, arid navigated by 4,336 men, were em- 

 ployed bv the British Government, to export the 

 produce of the fisheries on the banks of Newfound- 

 land, where the principle cod fisheries are. The 

 vessels used in the fishery, are from 100 to 150 tons 

 burden, and catch from thirty to forty thousand fish 

 each; 10,000 persons being employed about this 

 fishery, in catching, salting, and drying the fish, 

 which are sent to all parts of Europe and the West- 

 Indies. These fisheries are said to bring in to the 

 proprietors a revenue of several millions yearly; and 

 they will probably remain in an iriexhausted and in- 

 exhaustible source of treasure, when the richest 

 mines are wrought out. Happy ordination of infi- 

 nite goodness and unerring wisdom, that while the 

 monstrous and unwholesome tribes are thinly scat- 

 tered or hid from our sight in the great abyss, the 

 wholesome and nutritious kinds abound in such num- 

 bers, and are brought, as it were, to our very doors ! 



Even the great Greenland Whale, which abounds 

 in such numbers in the northern ocean, is said to 

 furnish the inhabitants of those countries, which 

 border on his haunts, with a delicious luxury in the 

 article of food. The Porpoise was a royal dish oven 

 so late as the reign of Henry VIII. and the negroes 

 are said to be fond of the flesh of the voracious Shark. 



The Whale is well known on account of its im- 

 portance in furnishing such a supply of oil and 



