Mr. Abbs’s Observations 
372 
the compass of twelve or fifteen yards a boat load, from three 
to five tons, might have been taken up: that he measured 
several of the haddocks, from two to two feet eight inches 
in length, and six or seven inches deep ; about twice the size 
of haddocks on our coasts. That he opened all the haddocks he 
took on board, and in every one of them, both dead and ex- 
piring, he saw T the sound much inflated or blown up, to which 
he ascribes the great destruction, but without being able to 
give any further satisfactory reason. 
Mr. Stoker went from Archangel to Onega ; and when Mr. 
Armstrong, at the former place, related the story to the mer- 
chants and inhabitants at the Exchange, they replied, that they 
had known and heard of similar accidents ; and that the great 
quantity of thunder and lightning, usual near the Cape, was 
the reason. 
To the above relation, which I verily believe to be just and 
true, I shall not presume to add a word of my own, but submit 
the whole to your consideration. 
In my excursion along the coast of Northumberland, I 
found a fisherman careening his boat, w 7 ho told me that, prior 
to the late failure, he had frequently, with the assistance of 
two men, taken and sent to Newcastle, in one day, two boat 
loads of haddocks, containing in each from eighty to a hundred 
score ; but in the last season he had not, in the whole, taken 
more than forty or fifty haddocks. He could give no rea- 
son for the failure, but another man attributed the scarcity 
to the want of hard gales of wind, for some years, to blow the 
fish off the Dogger Bank to these coasts. 
The accounts received from Messrs. Stoker and Armstrong 
