THE COD AND COD-—FISHERY 305 
foot down. It needs a great deal of rope to work it, and, 
as arule,a large crew of men. On an average, such a net 
contains five hundred pounds of twine, and costs, ready to 
go into the water, about $500. The crew of the long, 
specially constructed boat numbers seven men, one of whom 
is the ‘‘seine master’; he directs the oarsmen, himself 
standing up forward on the lookout for shoals of fish. 
This net can be used only in more or less shallow water, 
where tides are slack and where the bottom is smooth and 
perfectly sandy. The purse-seine, a variety which can be 
pulled together into a bag below, and so fished far from 
land in deep water, is not used on our coast. To enable 
the master to see fish in ten fathoms of water, he uses a 
“fish glass,” a metal funnel with a plain glass bottom, which 
he pushes down below the ruffled surface of the sea. An 
advantage of the purse-seine net is that the fisherman 
pursues the fish with it,instead of waiting for them to come 
to him. It satisfies also the mind restless to be hunting 
and working, rather than, like the lazy spider, merely 
sitting down and taking the chance of the prey coming 
voluntarily along. 
The latest contrivance, however, and the one now gener- 
ally used, is called a cod trap. It is practically nothing 
but a large room with walls and floor of twine, and the sur- 
face of the sea for a roof. It has a door on the landward, 
into the middle of which passes an upright net partition, 
called a leader. The leader is made to the land or rocks 
along which the fish are wont to swim and feed in their 
great shoals. When the room or trap is seen by the crew 
in the boat overhead to contain fish, the doors are pulled 
up,and then the floor is passed over the boat till all the fish 
x 
