FISHES. 249 



others, The common Cod is so very voracious, that five- 

 and-thirty crabs, none smaller than half-a-crown, have been 



Fig. 203. COD. 



taken out of the stomach of one fish.* But this very voracity 

 makes the capture more easy, as almost any bait is acceptable. 

 The great value of the Newfoundland Cod fishery is well 

 known. The produce in 1836 was 860,354 quintals of fish,*)" 

 each quintal being a hundred pounds. The oil which they 

 yield is also a product of commercial and medicinal importance. 

 Clupridce, the family of the Herring\. Every reader of a 

 newspaper must be familiar with the term, " Whitebait din- 

 ner,'^ as indicating a repast held in high estimation by the 

 Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, and by the learned 

 Fellows of the Royal Society; and for which the ministers of 

 the Sovereign pay annually a visit to Blackwall. This little 

 fish (Fig. 204), so prized for its delicious flavour, was formerly 



Fig. 204. "WHITEBAIT. 



* By Mr. Couch. Yarell, vol. ii. p. 145. 



f Penny Cyclopaedia. 



j In the Cod, the Haddock, the Whiting, and other fishes belonging to 

 the families we have been considering, the ventral fins are immediately 

 below the pectorals. In the Herring, the Salmon, the Pike, and others 

 belonging to families now about to be enumerated, the ventral fins are 

 attached to the abdomen, and are situated far behind the pectorals. This 

 circumstance enables us to divide such of the soft-rayed fishes (malacop- 

 terygii), as are possessed of ventral fins into two groups the abdominal 

 and sub-brachial, according to the situation of the fins. 



" Feasts which would have made the icthyophagous epicures of old 

 die of envy." FORBES AND SPKATT'S LYCIA, vol. ii. p. 91. 



