GADID^E. 279 



north-easterly gales. During a good season they are described as forming 

 "mountains of fish," but frequently none can be captured at this period, either with 

 seines or lines : the fishermen say they keep quiet until a new school arrives and 

 drives them forward, their quiescence being probably due to the coldness of the 

 water as compared with that at the depths from which they have left. They are 

 found to keep nearest the bottom in coldest weather, while the fishermen, at least 

 in certain localities where the current is not too strong, use floats to keep their 

 nets or lines some distance from the ground ; consequently such lines as are 

 suspended at both ends only have the central portion reaching the bottom, while 

 the remainder gradually approaches the surface, and thus cod are taken at often 

 twenty or thirty fathoms from the ground. On leaving the coast of Norway they 

 seem either to go direct out to sea or along the western shores, their course 

 appearing to depend considerably upon the temperature of the water. They 

 consume small fish, as the young of their own kind or any they can obtain, but 

 are especially partial to sand-eels, herrings, sprats, and the spawn of herrings ; 

 also crustaceous and testaceous animals, and, as is well known to fishermen, 

 evidently preferring one sort of animal food to another, being very partial to 

 crabs and whelks, while their digestion is so powerful that the greater portion of 

 the shells they swallow are dissolved. They often disgorge their food when 

 hooked, and being drawn on board. In the North Sea they frequently feed at 

 night time on the herrings meshed in the drift-nets, doing much damage to the 

 light cotton nets. While off Devonshire and Cornwall they feast extensively upon 

 pilchards during the autumnal migration. The contents of their stomachs are almost 

 infinite : from one captured in Lynn Deeps on Midsummer-eve, 1626, and brought 

 to the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, was taken a book in three treatises ; from 

 another, Captain Hill recovered his keys several days after he had dropped them 

 overboard from a North Sea trawler very many miles distant from where they 

 had been lost. An entire partridge was taken from the stomach of one. Johnston 

 observed that a fisherman caught a cod having a hare in its stomach ; while 

 another had a white turnip. Mr. Reid, of Wick, saw a black guillemot in perfect 

 feather removed from the stomach of one of these fishes in March, 1879 ; while 

 Mr. Grove took a piece of tallow candle seven inches long from the inside of a 

 cod. Stones and similar indigestible substances are frequently found in their 

 digestive cavities, and which have probably been swallowed in order to obtain the 

 corallines which were attached to them : it subsequently rejects the stones, &c. 

 Couch observed six picked dog-fishes, each nine inches long, removed from inside 

 another : while he records the following Crustacea taken from examples captured 

 in the west portion of the British Channel : Crabs — Stenorynchus plialagium, 

 Achceus Cranchii, Inachus Dorsetensis, I. dorynchus, I. leptochirus, Hyas coarctatus, 

 Eurynome aspera, Xantho tuberculata, Cancer pagurus, Portunus corrugatus, P, 

 arcuatus, P. marmoreus, P. piisillus, P. longiceps, Gonoplax angulatus, Atelecyclus 

 heterodon, Corystes cassivelaunus, Pagurus Bernliardus. Long-tailed crustaceans 

 of the lobster kind — Galathcea sqiutmifera, G. strigosa, G. dispersa, G. Andrewsii, 

 Munida Rondeletii, Gebia stellata, G. deltura, Nika ediilis, N. Couchii, Squilla 

 Desmarestii, Alpheus ruber, Scylla/ms arctus. A Norway lobster, Nephrops 

 Noricegicus, has been found in one from the Scotch coast. Examining a consider- 

 able number of stomachs removed from cod-fishes taken on the east coast of 

 England during the winter, of 1880-81, whelks and crabs, especially Hyas coarc- 

 tatus, appeared to have formed their principal food. Sharks, dog-fishes, seals, &c, 

 are found preying on them, and sea-birds and larger fishes on their young. 

 Thompson (Depths of the Sea) observes upon having dredged over the Faroe 

 Bank at a depth of from 200 to 50 fathoms ; the bottom gravel and nullipore, and 

 the tempera! are from 8 deg. to 10 deg. C. The banks swarmed with the common 

 brittle star (Opliathaix fragilis), with the Norway lobster (Nephrops Norwegians), 

 large spider-crabs, several species of Qalathea and many of the genus Crangon. 

 So ample a supply of their favourite food readily accounted for the abundance and 

 excellence of the cod and ling on these banks. 



They may be kept in salt water-vivaria as I have already alluded to 

 (p. 27-1 ante). Near North Quecnsferry a number of fish arc kept in a salt- 



