COMMON COD. 145 



may be traced as occurring also on the shore of almost every 

 county in Ireland. In the United Kingdom alone, this 

 fish, in the catching, the curing, the partial consumption and 

 sale, supplies employment, food, and profit to thousands of 

 the human race. 



The Codfish is very voracious ; a favourable circumstance 

 for the fishermen, who experience little difficulty in taking 

 them with almost any bait whenever a favourable locality is 

 ascertained. As these fish ^ generally inhabit deep water, 

 from twenty-five to forty and even fifty fathoms, and feed 

 near the ground on various small fish, worms, Crustacea* and 

 testacea, their capture is only attempted with lines and hooks. 

 Two sorts of lines, adapted for two very different modes of fish- 

 ing, are in common use. One mode is by deep sea-lines, call- 

 ed bulters, on the Cornish coast : these are long lines, with 

 hooks fastened at regular distances along their whole length by 

 shorter and smaller cords called snoods; the snoods are six feet 

 long each, and placed on the long line twelve feet from each 

 other, to prevent the hooks becoming entangled. Near the 

 hooks these shorter lines, or snoods, are formed of separate 

 threads loosely fastened together, to guard against the teeth of 

 the fish. Some variations occur at different parts of the coast, 

 as to the number of hooks attached to the line, as well as in 

 the length of the snood ; but the distance on the long line 

 between two snoods is always double the length of the snood 

 itself. Buoys, buoy-ropes, and anchors or grapples, are 

 fixed one to each end of the long line ; the hooks are baited 

 with sandlaunce, limpet, whelk, &c. : the lines are always 

 laid, or, as it is termed, shot, across the tide ; for if the tide 

 runs upon the end of the line, it will force the hooks together, 

 by which the whole tide's fishing is irrecoverably lost : they 



* Mr. Couch has taken thirty-five crabs, none less than the size of a half- 

 crown piece, from the stomach of one Cod. 



