FISHES. 619 
and Cette, where the process of curing is completed. In our home 
fisheries, to abbreviate slightly Dr. Bertram’s account, the greater 
part of the cod taken are eaten fresh, but considerable quantities of 
the cod and ling taken on the coast are sent to market cured. The 
process pursued is very simple : they are brought on shore quite fresh, 
and are at once split from head to tail, and, by copious washings, 
thoroughly cleansed from all particles of blood ; a piece of the back- 
bone is cut away ; they are drained, and afterwards laid down in long 
vats, where they are covered with salt, and kept under heavy weights. 
By-and-bye the fish are taken out of the vats; they are once more 
drained, and carefully brushed, to remove any impurity, and bleached 
by being spread out singly on the sandy beach or on the rocks ; 
when thoroughly bleached, they are collected into heaps technically 
called steeples, and when the d/0om, or whitish appearance, comes out 
on the fish they are ready for the market. 
The cod is one of our best-known fishes, and was at one time 
much more plentiful and cheaper than it is now. It is a deep-water 
fish, found, as we have seen, in all northern seas, and in the Atlantic, 
but never in the Mediterranean. It is extremely voracious, greedily 
eating up the smaller denizens of the ocean. It grows to a large 
size, and is very prolific, as most fishes are. A cod’s roe has been 
found more than once to be half the gross weight of the fish, and 
specimens of the female cod have been caught with upwards of 
8,000,000 eggs. The fish spawn in mid-winter; but here our in- 
formation ceases ; when it becomes reproductive is unknown. Dr. 
Bertram thinks that it is at least three years old before it is endowed 
with the power of breeding. 
‘The growth of the cod is supposed to be very slow. Dr. Bertram 
quotes the authority of a rather learned fisherman of Buckie, who had 
seen a cod which had got enclosed in a large rock pool, and he found 
that it did not grow at a greater rate than eight to twelve ounces per 
annum, though it had abundance of food. 
On our own coast two modes of fishing are in common use: one 
by deep-sea lines, on each of which hooks are fastened at distances 
twelve feet apart by means of short lines six feet long, called on the 
Cornish coast “snoods.” Buoys, ropes, or grapnels, are fixed to 
each end of the long line, to keep them from entanglement with each 
other. The hooks are baited with capelan, lance, or whelks, and the 
lines are shot across the tide about the time of slack water, in from 
forty to fifty fathoms, and are hauled in for examination after six hours. 
An improvement has been introduced upon this mode of fishing 
by Mr. Cobb. He fixes a small piece of cork about twelve inches. 
