COD. 
59 
at some distant date as the resort of fish, than more lately, 
down to the time of its renewed discovery. In the meanwhile 
the fish has had time to grow, as well in size as numbers, so 
that wonders are told of the success of the first adventurers to 
the^ spot; from which two boats returned after a week’s 
fishing, each with between thirteen and fourteen tons of fish. 
Ihe size of the individual Cods is not mentioned, but as a 
single example was known to have lived in an enclosed pond 
at Logan, in Scotland, to the supposed age of about fifteen 
years, during which it is said to have made a gradual increase 
in bulk, we may judge that those taken at Eockall, at freedom 
and fully fed, had attained to the full of that which at any 
time they reach. A successful fisherman on the banks of 
Newfoundland informed me that out of many hundreds he once 
caught there, there was a Cod which reached to a hundredweight, 
and that with a wish to show it to his friends at home, he 
purchased it of his captain for the price of half-a-crown. The 
argest Cod I have known weighed fifty-six pounds; but 
scarcely any are in finer condition than those which abound in 
t e deeper water between the Scilly Islands and the west coast 
c Cornwall, and also between St. Ives on the north and the 
nlount’s Bay. 
I he fishery for Cods is conducted with hooks, and either 
i^ith a single line from the boat, (each fisherman attending to 
a couple,) or with long lines, which in the west of England 
are termed bulteys, or bulters, and which cannot be shot in 
such deep water as may admit the single line. These bulteys are 
urmed of a principal line, which is a stout cord or small 
^ope, and to which is fastened a series of short lines about a 
lathom in length, placed at such distances from one another 
as that they shall not be entangled together. Sometimes many 
undieds of these hooks are thus fastened together, with a 
stone or grapnel to moor them, and with a cork-line to mark 
^c place and draw them up. The baits are various, — as 
enings, Pilchards, and Lamperns; and the direction is across 
I e course of the tide, on ground where the hooks are not 
* ely to get entangled amidst the rocks. The whole is drawn 
up at such a time as experience has taught the fishermen to 
c sirfficient for their purpose. If left long after the fish are 
cad they are subject to the depredations of some of the 
sessile-eyed crustacean animals, termed by fishermen sea lice; 
