286 LABRADOR 



have to a humble corner on a fishmonger's slab." During 

 his life he seems singularly free from diseases, but blindness 

 and rickets (unaccompanied by fever) have been found not 

 infrequently. The blindness may be due to mechanical 

 injuries or to exposure to too much light during the long 

 days of the north. Rickety fish often have humped backs. 



The largest codfish of which I have record on this coast 

 scaled one hundred and two pounds, and was five feet six 

 inches long. The record on the English coast is seventy- 

 eight pounds, with length of five feet eight inches ; this fish 

 was caught in 1755, and was sold for the sum of one shilling. 

 The largest recorded cod on the Newfoundland Banks was 

 caught by Captain Stephen May in 1838; the weight, after 

 the fish was gutted, was one hundred and thirty-six pounds ! 

 Another cod holds the record on the American coast; 

 he was caught by Captain Atwood, who found him to scale 

 one hundred and sixty pounds. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 and on the east coast of Labrador, the fish are of smaller 

 average size than on the banks off Newfoundland and the 

 United States. The fish from the far north, near Cape 

 Chidley, are both shorter and thinner than those taken at 

 the Strait of Belle Isle. The average Labrador cod taken 

 in the trap-net is about twenty inches long, and weighs 

 between three and four pounds. Those caught on hook 

 and line in the autumn are much larger and heavier. 



The monster cod once caught off Roc kail and the Hebrides 

 in the early days of those fisheries have disappeared. Pre- 

 sumably they held a kind of monopoly of all food that came 

 along, and thus assumed the first chances in swallowing 

 baited hooks. It may be noted that the cod is never large 

 enough to be completely free from the danger of being eaten 



