266 UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 



this family ranks second only to the one just considered. The 

 fishes it includes are voracious ground-feeders characteristic of 

 polar and temperate regions. With few exceptions they are 

 marine, and their favourite habitat is in water under 200 fathoms 

 in depth. Trawling and line-fishing are the chief methods by 

 which they are captured. The most notable British species are 

 Cod, Coal- Fish, Haddock, Whiting, Ling, and Hake. All of 

 these lay floating eggs. 



The Cod (Gadus morrhua, fig. 1194). This large and im- 

 portant fish is the most valuable member of its family so 

 far as its range extends, i.e. from Arctic seas to the Bay of 

 Biscay on one side of the North Atlsmtic, and as far as 



Fig. 1194. Cod-Fish (Gadus morrhua} 



New York on the other side. Giinther thus summarizes some 

 of the chief points regarding it (in The Study of Fishes]: 

 " The Cod-Fish occurs between 50 and 75 lat. N. in great 

 profusion, but is not found nearer the equator than 40 lat. 

 Close to the coast it is met with singly all the year round, 

 but towards the spawning -time it approaches the shore in 

 numbers, which happens in January in England and not before 

 May on the American coasts. The English resorted to the 

 cod -fisheries of Iceland before the year 1415, but since the 

 sixteenth century most vessels go to the banks of Newfound- 

 land, and almost all the preserved cod consumed during Lent 

 in the various Continental countries is imported from across the 

 Atlantic. At one time the Newfoundland cod-fishery rivalled 

 in importance the whale-fishery and the fur trade of North 

 America." The Newfoundland catch for 1902 weighed about 

 140,000 tons. 



The Coal- Fish (Gadus virens). This fish, locally known as 

 " green cod" and " saith ", is somewhat smaller than the ordinary 



