— 19 — .10 HS. SCHMIDT 



by il rod cirole; wlmn bolli oggs und young were taken at. a station, this is only shown 

 by the sign for the young. 



It can be understood, that within the wide regions worked over by us, there may be 

 fairly great différences in the spawning time at ditt'erent places. It is allowable to say, 

 however, that the spawning occurs everywhere in April or the months round about April, 

 but as will be mentioned more particularly later in dealing with the separate regions, the 

 cod eggs can be found at various places within our region at least from January — February 

 to June inclusive. 



With regard to the depths over which the pelagic eggs and young occur, the cod in 

 this regard belongs to the species occurring in shallow water which are able to reproduce 

 in depths of quite a few fathoms. On studying my journal for the different years 1903—06, 

 1 thus find that we have only rarely taken cod eggs over greater depths than ca. 200 

 meters, and that the great majority were even found within or near to the 

 100 meter line. It is thus indeed only over extremely small areas of the Atlantic that 

 the spawning of the cod takes place, namely, in addition to the banks lying along the 

 coasts, only on the Kockall Bank,' the large Fœroe Bank S.W. of the Fœroes and one or 

 more smaller, recently discovered banks lying to the west of the latter. There is reason 

 for mentioning the last named bank more particularly in this connection. 



We discovered it on the voyage of the "Thor" from South Iceland to the Hebrides at 

 the end of May 1905. During this voyage we also had several stations in deep water 

 (about 1000 meters or more; Stations 58, 59, 60, 61), where not a single egg or young 

 of the cod was found. At Station 62, which was also supposed to be over deep water, a 

 single haul with the pelagic net showed, however, that some cod eggs were present (they 

 were hatched later) and a tiny specimen of the cod fry was likewise taken in the young- 

 fish trawl. Soundings then showed that we had there only 190—210 meters depth. At 

 the following stations we again found great depths, and here the cod eggs and young 

 were quite wanting. The occurrence of cod eggs will always be as in this case a trust- 

 worthy indication of shallow waters. 



With regard to the pelagic young, these are naturally not bound in their occurrence 

 like the eggs to depths less than 200 meters. During the first stages of development they 

 are carried helplessly away by the currents and if the latter should tend in a direction 

 out to sea, they are carried out over greater depths than those where they were spawned. 

 As previously mentioned, however, the direction of the currents within our region is always 

 from deeper to shallower water or along the depth contours, so that in general the chances 

 of the cod young being carried out over great depths are not considerable. Looking at 

 the Chart which shows the distribution of the pelagic young cod, we thus see that the 

 great majority of the stations where cod young were taken lie within the 

 200-meter line. In fact only an extremely small proportion of the tens of thousands 

 of pelagic young cod we have taken in the course of years were caught beyond the 

 200-meter line, and on considering all the Charts of the distribution of the pelagic stages 

 (1, IX, X), we see that wherever we have made lines from great depths in towards the 

 coasts or the reverse (see e. g. Chart 1, a line from W. of Scotland and various lines from 



1 That the ood spawns on the Rockall Bank, 1 know from the investigations made by the "Thor" 

 in May 1908. These gave both the pelagic eggs and the fry of the ood (see the tables, St. 14—20, 1908, 

 and the Appendix at the end of this paper). 



3* 



