816 GADIDiE. 



winter pastime to large numbers of all classes, who fish 

 for them with a bait and line through holes cut in 

 the ice. Huts or cabans are built for this purpose on 

 the frozen surface of the river, and to these the 

 good citizens resort at night in friendly parties. Many 

 jovial gatherings of this kind will be recalled by 

 the sojourner, especially the military one, at Quebec, 

 where they are held on the St. Charles river, at its 

 junction with the St. Lawrence and just opposite the 

 city. 



Sometimes as many as eighteen or twenty dozen fish 

 are killed in one night. A great proportion are cooked 

 and eaten in the cabans there and then, but those in- 

 tended to be preserved are thrown outside on the ice to 

 freeze, the excessive tenderness of their flesh rendering it 

 impossible to preserve them in any other way. Thus 

 treated they soon become stiff and hard, and so brittle 

 that they may be snapped in two like glass ; but it is a 

 curious fact that the fish thus frozen will, on being taken 

 home and immersed in cold water, recover their vital 

 powers and shortly begin to swim about. This singular 

 suspension of animation is entirely dependent on the 

 freezing being allowed to take place immediately on their 

 withdrawal from the water, for naturally they are by no 

 means tenacious of life. 



In the frozen state they may be preserved in an eat- 



