GADEANS AND PLEUEONECTS. 339 



ture. The Dogger Bank has long been famous for cod, and 

 deep-sunk hordes of these fish are now known to lie close 

 upon our own shores, particularly along those of Nor- 

 folk and Lincoln. Of late years, too, greater takes have 

 been effected off those of New England alone, than from 

 the great fishery of Newfoimdland itself. The G. morrhua 

 is therefore a most widely distributed fish, and being ex- 

 ceedingly prolific, we have every reason to believe that a 

 remote posterity will continue to eat them and oyster 

 sauce together with as little stint as now.* Twenty 

 years ago it was computed that twenty thousand sailors 

 were employed, who carried off 36,000,000 from New- 

 foundland alone. Even on our own shores this fish is 

 sometimes so common as to become a drug in provincial 

 markets, and instances have occurred of very fine speci- 

 mens finding no sale. Mr. Yarrell gives a remarkable 

 instance of one weighing seventy pounds, which sold at 

 Scarborough for a shilling. The steady maintenance of 

 enormous supplies from these cod-banks will not sur- 

 prise any who consider the unprecedented fecundity of 

 the females. In the abdomen of one mother, and she a 

 moderate-sized coddess of only nine pounds' weight, not 

 fewer than nine hundred thousand eggs have been count- 

 ed ; what increase, then, in spite of every conceivable 

 deduction, might we not expect from shoals so largely 

 disseminated, generally distributed, and containing my- 

 riads of members of twice these dimensions ! 



* This inference is borne out by what we read of their stratifi- 

 cation, which is so dense and deep that nothing seems to affect it ; 

 ia spite of the myriads upon myriads devoured by wild birds and 

 ravenous sea-monsters, and the quantity (a very small one 

 comparatively) abstracted by man, aU that is necessary in this 

 fishery is to be incessantly dropping and drawing in the hne ; and 

 so long as the fisherman's arm is equal to the effort, he may count 

 his fish by the time it requires to puU up and re-adjust his 

 tackle. 



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