GADUS MORRHUA. 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



GADUS MORRHUA. The common or Bank cod is the most 

 interesting of all the species. Regarded as a supply of food, 

 a source of national industry and commercial wealth, or as a 

 wonder of nature in its continuance and multiplication, this 

 fish may justly challenge the admiration of every intelligent 

 observer. Though found in considerable numbers on the 

 coasts of other northern regions, an extent of about four hun- 

 dred and fifty miles of ocean, laving the chill and rugged 

 shores of Newfoundland, is the favorite resort of countless 

 multitudes of cod, which visit the submarine mountain known 

 as the Grand Banks, to feed upon the crustaceous and mol- 

 luscous animals abundant in such situations. Hither, also, 

 fleets of fishermen regularly adventure, sure of winning a rich 

 freight in return for their toils and exposure, and of conveying 

 plenty and profit to their homes and employers. Myriads of 

 cod are thus yearly destroyed by human diligence ; myriads 

 of millions, in the egg state, are prevented from coming into 

 existence, not only by the fishermen, who take the parents 

 before they have spawned, but by hosts of ravenous fishes, and 

 an immense concourse of other animals, which attend upon 

 their migrations to feed upon their spawn ; yet, in despite of 

 the unceasing activity of all these destructive causes, year 

 after year finds the abundance still undiminished, inexhausti- 

 ble by human skill and avidity, irrepressible by the combined 

 voracity of all the tribes of ocean. This, however, is by no 

 means the sum of destruction to which the species is liable. 

 After the spawn is hatched, while the fry are too young and 

 feeble to save themselves by flight or resistance, they are pur- 

 sued and devoured in shoals by numerous greedy tyrants of 

 the deep, and, still worse, by their own gluttonous progenitors, 

 clearly showing that, without some extraordinary exertion of 

 creative energy, the existence of the species could not have 

 been protracted beyond a few years. Such, however, is the 

 fecundity with which this race is endowed, that if but one fe- 

 male annually escaped, and her eggs were safely hatched, the 

 species would be effectually preserved. This is not so sur- 

 prising, when we recollect that the ovaries of each female con- 

 tain not fewer than 9,344,000 eggs, as has been ascertained 

 by careful and repeated observation. Few members of the 

 animal creation contribute a greater mass of subsistence to 



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