THE COD AND COD-FISHERY 



295 



Though this fish prefers such a range of depth, it may be 

 trapped in water as shallow as two fathoms or as deep as 

 three hundred fathoms. To the most favoured depths the 

 animal retires after the spawning season, which is also that 

 of optimum temperature along the immediate Labrador 

 shore, has been passed. In rhythmic fashion the cod 

 returns each year to its birthplace with the shoal, and 

 haunts the same neighbourhood throughout its short season 

 of inshore life. 



The shoal arrives on the coast about a week later for 

 every degree of latitude farther north. But, as codfish 

 are spread over the whole coast of over a thousand miles 

 simultaneously during August and September, the later 

 arrival in the north cannot be due to a south-to-north move- 

 ment of the same individual fish in a single shoal. The 

 first fish at St. Anthony (on the Treaty shore of Newfound- 

 land) appear about May 25; those at Cartwright, about 

 July 25. In Europe the advance-guard reach the Nor- 



