54(5 
THE OCEAN WORLD. 
streams or rivers, remaining during the greater part of the year in the 
depths of the sea. Its habitual sojourn is in the portion of the Northern 
Ocean lying between the fortieth and sixty-sixth degrees of latitude. 
In the vast range thus frequented by the cod, two large spaces are 
pointed out which it seems to prefer. The first extends to the coast 
of Greenland, and the other is limited by Iceland, N orway, the Danish 
coast, Germany, Holland, and the east and north coast of Great 
Britain and the Orkney Isles, comprehending the Doggerbank, Yell- 
bank, and Cromer coast, together with salt-water lakes and arms of the 
sea, such as the Gairloch, Portsoy, and the Moray Firth, which indent 
the west coast of Scotland, and attract considerable shoals of cod-fish. 
The second range, less generally known, but more celebrated among 
sailors, includes the coast of New England, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 
and, above all, the island of Newfoundland, on the south coast of 
which is the famous sand-bank called the Great Bank, having a 
length of nearly two hundred leagues, with a breadth of sixty-two, 
over which flows from ten to fifty fathoms of water. Here the 
cod-fish swarm, for here they meet shoals of herrings and other 
animals on which they feed. Such is, according to Lacepede, the 
geographical distribution of the cod-fish. 
The English, French, Dutch, and Americans give themselves up to 
the cod-fishery on the bank of Newfoundland with inconceivable 
ardour. This island was discovered and visited by the Norwegians in 
the tenth and eleventh centuries, long before the discovery of America ; 
but it was only in 1497, after the discoveries of Columbus, that the 
navigator, John Cabot, having visited these regions, gave it the name 
by which it has since been known, and called attention to the swarms 
of cod-fish which inhabited the surrounding sea. Immediately after, 
the English and some other nations hastened to reap these fruitful 
fields of living matter. In 1578, France sent a hundred and fifty 
ships to the great bank, Spain a hundred and twenty-five, Portugal 
fifty, and England forty. 
During the first half of the eighteenth century, England and her 
colonies, with the French, cultivated the cod-fishery. 
From 1823 to 1831 France sent three hundred and forty-one ships, 
with seven thousand six hundred and eighty-five men, which carried 
into port over fifty million pounds of fish, an average of about six 
millions annually. Two thousand English ships of various sizes, 
