55(1 HISTORY OF 



Other sand-banks that lie off Cape Breton. That extensive flat 

 seems to be no other than the broad top of a sea-mountain, ex- 

 tending for above five hundred miles long, and surrounded witb 

 a deeper sea. Hither the cod annually repair in numbers be. 

 yond the power of calculation, to feed on the quantity of \vorni« 

 that are to be found there in the sandy bottom. Here they are 

 taken in such quantities, that they supply all Europe with a con- 

 siderable share of provision. The English have stages erected 

 all along the shore for salting and drying them ; and the fisher- 

 men, who take them with the hook and line, which is their 

 method, draw them in as fast as they can throw out. This 

 immense capture, however, makes but a very small diminution, 

 when compared to their numbers ; and when their provision 

 there is exhausted, or the season for propagation returns, they 

 go off to the polar seas, where they deposit their roes in full se- 

 curity. From thence want of food forces them, as soon as the 

 first more southern seas are open, to repair southward for sub- 

 sistence. Nor is this fish an unfrequent visitant upon our own 

 shores : but the returns are not so regular, nor does the captiu'e 

 bear any proportion to that at Newfoundland. 



The haddock, the whiling. and the mackarel,* are thought by 



• Nearly all the species of mackarol are gregarious, and unite in immense 

 shoals. Some of them are migratory, making long voyages at certain sea- 

 sons of the year. It is believed that they are all eatable ; and some of them 

 are well known to be exceedingly delicate food. They afford employment 

 and support to numerous fishermen in various countries of Europe. They 

 are in the whole about twenty-five species. 



The mackarel, when alive, from the elegance of its shape, and the bril. 

 liancy of its colours, is one of the most beautiful fish that frequents our 

 coasts. Death, in some measure, impairs the colours, but it by no means 

 obliterates them. 



It visits our shores in vast shoals ; but, from being very tender and unfit 

 for long carriage, is found less useful than other gregarious fish. In some 

 places it is taken by lines from boats, as during a fresh gale of wind it readily 

 seizes a bait. It is necessary that the boat should be in motion, in order to 

 drag the bait along (a bit of red cloth, or a piece of the tail of a mackarel,) 

 near the surface of the water. The great fishery for mackarel is on some 

 parts of the west coast of England. This is of such an extent as to employ, 

 in the whole, a capital of nearly i200,000. The fishermen go out to the dis- 

 tance of several leagues from the shore, and stretch their nets, which are 

 sometimes several miles in extent, across the tide, during the night. ITie 

 meshes of these nets are just large enough to admit the heads of tolerably 

 large fish, and catch them by the gills. A single boat has been known to 

 bring in, after one uighfs fishing, a cargo that has sold for nearly seventy 



