COMMON COD. 147 



fathoms water, have taken eighty score of Cod in one day. 

 These are brought to Gravesend in stout cutter-rigged ves- 

 sels of eighty or one hundred tons burthen, called storeboats, 

 built for this traffic, with a large well in which the fish are 

 preserved alive ; and of these a portion is sent up to Bil- 

 lingsgate market by each night-tide. 



Well-boats, for preserving alive the fish taken at sea, came 

 into use in this country early in the last century. They are 

 said to have been first built at Harwich about 1712. The 

 storeboats remain as low down as Gravesend, because the 

 water there is sufficiently mixed to keep the fish alive : if 

 they were to come higher up, it would kill them. 



A change has lately taken place from the Cod having 

 shifted their ground. Formerly the Gravesend and Barking 

 fishermen obtained no Cod nearer than the Orkneys or the 

 Dogger Bank ; but for the last two or three years the supply 

 for the London market has been obtained by going no far- 

 ther than the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coasts, and even 

 between that and London, where previously very few fish 

 could be obtained. 



Cod have been kept in salt-water ponds in different parts 

 of Scotland, and found to maintain their condition unim- 

 paired. Of these ponds there are three ; one in Galloway, 

 another in Fife, and a third in Orkney. That in Galloway 

 is at Logan, the seat of Colonel M'Dowall : it is a basin of 

 thirty feet in depth, and one hundred and sixty in circumfe- 

 rence, hewn out from the solid rock, and communicating 

 with the sea by one of those fissures that are common to 

 bold and precipitous coasts. A fisherman is attached to 

 this preserve, whose duty it is constantly to supply the fish 

 with the necessary quantity of food, which several species 

 soon learn to take eagerly from the hand. In the course of 

 the fishing for this daily supply, such fish as are not too 



