292 Modern Pishculture in Presh and Salt Water. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



CODFISH. 



The cod family is the most important of all the fishes, 

 containing a large number of species of considerable 

 size, distributed throughout all the parts of the north- 

 ern hemisphere in great numbers. The cod is easily 

 captured and readily preserved. It feeds more men 

 than any other fish: Norway lives from it, and exports 

 60 per cent, of the catch. 



It was the fisheries and not the sterile rocks of Mas- 

 sachusetts which tempted our ancestors to settle on 

 that rock-bound and inhospitable coast, and their de- 

 scendants remembered this when they put the great 

 gilt codfish in the State Capitol, where it hangs to-day, 

 to remind the law-makers that once the "Codfish Aris- 

 tocracy" was the real thing, for the very existence of 

 our "first families" in the early emigration days de- 

 pended upon the humble codfish. 



The nutritious cod is found in the North Atlantic, 

 North Pacific and Polar oceans to far beyond the Arc- 

 tic Circle. In the West Atlantic it occurs in winter in 

 considerable numbers as far south as the mouth of 

 Chesapeake Bay, latitude 37 degrees, and stragglers 

 have been observed off Cape Charles; Cape Hatteras 

 may be considered its southern limit. 



Its distribution on the Pacific coast is not so well 

 known, although it appears to occur on all the off-shore 

 banks of that coast and to the coasts north of the Straits 

 of Fuca. 



There is a cod bank outside of the mouth of the 

 Columbia River, but it is not much fished, and on the 



