FISHERMEN'S MEMORIAL AND RECORD BOOK. 81 



i 

 great bravery and coolness. The Mass. Humane Society remembered 



thrni with suitable testimonials of thi'ir appreciation of the gallant 

 deed they had accomplished. The yacht was subsequently got off and 

 repaired. 



During the galo-ten of our fishing fleet were driven ashore along 

 the coast, three of which proved total wrecks, and arc enumerated in 

 the list of that year's losses. Most of the others required large out- 

 lays for repairs. 



Sea Fish and Fisheries. 



If the Bea is prodigal of life to a degree that baffles our powers 

 of conception and calculation, it is no less a scene of boundless de- 

 struction. The life of all fishes is one of perpetual warfare, and the 

 only law that pervades the great world of waters is that of the 

 strongest, the swiftest and the most voracious. The carnage of the 

 sea immeasurably exceeds even that which is permitted to perplex 

 our reason on the earth. "We know, however, that without it the 

 population of the ocean would soon become so immense that, vast aa 

 it is, it would not suffice for its multitudinous inhabitants. Few fish- 

 es probably die a natural death, and some seem to have been created 

 solely to devour others. There is probably none which does not feed 

 on some other species or its own. Many of the monsters that roam 

 the watery plains are provided with maws capable of engulfing thou- 

 sands of their kind in a day. A hogshead of herrings has been 

 taken out of the belly of a whale. A shark probably destroys tens 

 of thousands in a year. Fifteen full sized herrings have been found 

 in the stomach of a cod. If we allow a codfish only two herrings per 

 day for only seven months in the year, we have 420 as his allowance 

 during that period, and fifty codfish equal one fisherman in destruc- 

 tive power. But the quantity of cod and of ling, which are as de- 

 structive as cod, taken in 1861, and registered by the Scotch fishery 

 board was, say the commissioners, over 81,000 cwts. On an aver- 

 age thirty codfish make one hundred weight of dried fish, and 2,400,- 

 000 will equal 48,000 fishermen. In other words, the cod and ling 

 caught on the Scotch coast in 1861, if they had been left in the water 

 would have devoured as many herrings as were caught by all the fish- 

 ermen of Scotland, and 6,000 more in the same year. Compared with 

 the enormous consumption of fish by birds and by each other, the 

 draughts made upon the population of the sea by man, with all his in- 

 genious fishing devices seem to dwindle into absolute insignificance. 



