OSSEOUS FISHES. 551 
long line, to keep them from entanglement with each other. The 
hooks are baited with capelan, launce, or whelks, and the lines are 
shot across the tide about the time of slack water, in lrorn lorty to 
fifty fathoms, and are hauled in for examination after six hours. 
An improvement has been introduced upon this mode of fishing by 
Mr. Cobh. He fixes a small piece of cork about twelve inches above 
the hook, which suspends the bait, and exhibits it more clearly to the 
fish by the motion of the wave. The fishermen, when not engaged in 
hauling, shooting, or baiting the long lines, fish with hand-lines, 
holding one in each hand, each armed with two books, kept apart by 
a strong piece of wire. A heavy weight attached to the lower end of 
each line keeps it steady near the ground, where the fish principally 
feed. Enormous quantities of cod, haddock, whiting, and coal-fish, 
with pollack, hake, ling, and torsk, are taken in this way all round 
our coast. Of cod-fish alone four hundred to five hundred and fifty 
have been taken in ten hours by one man, and eight men have taken 
eighty score of cod in one day, fishing off the Doggerbank in five and 
twenty fathoms water. Latterly the Norfolk and Lincoln, and even 
the Essex, coasts, have yielded a large supply of fish, which are caught 
as described, and are stowed in well-boats, in which they are carried 
to Gravesend, whence they are transhipped into market-boats, 
and sent up to Billingsgate by each evening tide ; the store-boats 
not being allowed to come up higher, as the fresh water would kill 
the fish. 
The Haddock ( Morrhua wglefinus) is common in our markets ; it is 
much smaller than the cod, but in other respects not unlike it. It 
frequents the same localities, and is caught with long lines baited with 
pieces of herring and sand-larvse. On the north-east coast of Scotland 
the haddock, cured over a juniper fire, is one of the principal adjuncts 
to the celebrated Scottish breakfast. 
The Whiting, Merlangw vulgaris (Eig. 375), by some amateurs con- 
sidered the most delicate of all the Gadiclse, is plentiful all round our 
coast. It spawns in March, and the eggs are quickly hatched. It 
prefers a sandy shore, and is usually found some miles from the coast. 
It is a small fish, rarely exceeding twelve inches, and seldom reaching 
two pounds in weight. The whiting is long in the body, clothed with 
very small, thin, and round scales ; its dorsal fins are, like the cod, 
three in number ; it is without barbellary appendage ; its upper jaw 
