450 Storer on the 
Quincy market, informs me he saw taken in the 
spring of the year 1807, at New Ledge, sixty miles 
southeast of Portland, Me. ; it weighed one hundred 
and seven pounds; and, to use his own words, “upe 
on its head were barnacles the size of his thumb." 
To Massachusetts, the cod fishery is exceedingly 
important, supplying our markets with an excellent 
, food throughout the year, and giving employment 
to thousands. In some portions of the State, this 
fishery is entirely superseded by the taking of 
whales. 'Thus, while every town in the county of 
Barnstable is more or less engaged in this business, 
and collectively they exhibit an aggregate of 212 
vessels, but a single fishing-smack was licensed in 
Duke’s county, in 1836, and not one in the county of 
l Nantucket; the attention of the inhabitants of the 
last two counties being entirely engaged in whaling. 
I have ascertained that in 1836, there were engaged 
in the cod fishery, from Gloucester, Marblehead, 
Provincetown, South Wellfleet, Cohasset, Duxbury, 
Plymouth, Manchester, Salem and Beverly, being 
ten towns, 561 vessels, having crews of 3816 men ; 
and that by these vessels there were taken 263,454 
quintals of fish. To these may be added the towns 
of Newburyport, Lynn, Falmouth, Holmes Hole and 
Sandwich, (in which I have not been able to learn 
the number of vessels exclusively employed in this 
fishery,) which furnished, in 1836, 16,265 quintals ; 
thus exhibiting 279,718 quintals of cod fish taken by 
the enterprise of the citizens of fifteen towns. When 
it is observed, that about 3500 of the cod fish from 
the Grand Bank, (which are generally much larger 
