304 LABRADOR 
. drawbacks. It involves both great risks and great per- 
sonal exposure. It allows so many wounded fish to escape 
that it is prohibited altogether along many sections of the 
coast. This prohibition is accomplished by getting local 
laws sanctioned by the Legislature and included in the 
annual “Fishery Laws.” In one place it was enforced by the 
residents at the end of their long guns; as they say, “‘ As well 
be hung as starve.” Oddly enough, at the opposite side 
of the sandy beach where they live, hand-lining has been 
ruined by west-coast boats with bultows, and the people 
who live there have, in consequence, fallen on very evil 
times. 
For this purpose the bottom beam and other trawls of 
the old country were found useless. Quite recently the 
enterprising firm of Bowring Brothers purchased a modern 
steam trawler, and tried all around the coast and islands, 
but met with so little success that the attempt has been 
abandoned. Gill-nets, which came next, are but little 
used for cod. Cod seem ordinarily too lazy in disposition 
even to put their heads hard enough into a mesh to be 
caught. This is, of course, very unlike the more agile 
salmon and trout. The large-mesh cod net, however, 
anchored on the bottom, still has itsadvocates, and at times 
many cod become entangled in the leaders of the trap-nets. 
The advent of the large seine-nets marked a very material 
advance in the rapidity with which the fish could be taken, 
and it is still at certain times and places the most success- 
ful method known. The net itself is an expensive affair. 
It is on an average eighty feet deep and over seven hundred 
feet in length. It has corks on the top to keep its upper 
end on the surface and leads on the bottom to keep the 
