THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 75 
shells and bones combined with the camp offal to build those 
deposits that we call shell heaps. 
In New England, it must have been the fish that furnished the 
surest support to the native savages. Even in the depths of its 
Arctic winter there was a chance to get eels, smelts and clams 
and at the first approach of mild weather the waters teemed with 
abundance. “It (Pawtucket Falls) is excellently accommodated 
with a fishing place,” wrote good Mr. Gookin in 1674, “and 
there is taken a variety of fish in their seasons, such as salmon, 
shad, lamprey eels, sturgeon, bass, and divers others, And this 
place being an ancient and capital seat of the Indians, they came 
to fish; and this good man (Mr. Eliot) takes this opportunity to 
spread the net of the Gospel to fish for their souls.” 
That child of Belial, Morton, of Merry Mount, as keen a sports- 
man as any of our Bohemian backwoodsmen, gives enthusiastic 
accounts of the abundance and excellence of the fish which were 
in the sea convenient to his house. He is the first author that 
mentions cod-liver oil, which now plays so beneficent, though 
nauseous a part in medicine. 
He writes: “ The coast aboundeth with such multitude of codd 
that the inhabitants of New England doe dunge their grounds 
with codd, and it is a commodity better than the golden mines of 
the Spanish Indes. * * * Greate store of train oyle is mayd 
of the livers of the codd and is a commodity that without ques- 
tion will enrich the inhabitants of New England quickly.” 
Almost coincident with the establishment of Plymouth Colony, 
we find laws concerning the fisheries, proof positive of the esteem 
in which they were held. 
In 1633, was passed what I take to be the first law for the en- 
couragement of fish-culture,in these words: “It is enacted.by the 
Court * * * but if any man desire to improve a place and 
stocke it with fish of any kind for his private use, it shal bee law- 
full for the Court to make any such graunt and forbid all others 
to make use of it.” 
In 1637 the same court enacted, with the contrary-mindedness 
of our Puritan forefathers, that six score and twelve fishes shall 
be accounted to the hundred of all sort of fishes. 
In 1670, it was set forth with pious teleology that “the provi- 
