402 THE ZOOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR COAST. 



early as 1819, tells us in his autobigraphy :* " When the 

 capelin came on the coast the first that arrived were 

 males. You can tell the male from the female by ex- 

 ternal signs, SO as to distinguish the sexes perfectly well. 

 When the males had been on the coast about a week, 

 then came a mixture of females. They look very much 

 like a smelt, and are soft and full of spawn. We did not 

 use them for food. On an average about one-tenth of 

 the capelin were females. When they had deposited 

 their spawn the males deposited their milt and made the 

 whole water white. Then the females went off. Soon 

 after the fishing slacked off, and we used to say they 

 were capelin sick." 



According to information received from intelligent 

 fishermen, the capelin remains upon the coast the year 

 round, but in winter retires to deep water. Is it not 

 probable that the cod has the same habit of going from 

 deef) water in-shore and to elevated " banks," for the pur- 

 pose of spawning during the spring and summer ; and in 

 the winter of retiring to depths inaccessible to the fish- 

 erman ? Should the cod be found to present local vari- 

 eties at intervals along the Atlantic coast, as seems prob- 

 ably the case, it would be a natural inference that it did 

 not migrate for hundreds of miles northward, following 

 the coming of spring from Massachusetts to Hudson's 

 Bay. It is abundant in Massachusetts Bay and on the 

 coast of Maine during the same time in summer that it 

 abounds on the Labrador coast and in Greenland. All 

 the facts observed by us tend to prove that the cod does 

 not migrate extensively, as commonly supposed. 



* U. S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. The Fishery Industries of tlie 

 United States. Section IV. Fishermen, 1887. p. 151. 



