THE COD OR BACCALAO. 
COD, POLLOCK, HADDOCK AND HAKE. 
T’was merry, when 
You wager’d on your angling ; when your diver 
Did hang a salt fish on his hook, which he 
With fervency drew up, 
Anthony and Cleopatra , Act-n Scene v. 
Within this twenty years 
Westward be found new lands, 
* * * 
Fish they have so great plenty, 
That in havens take and slane they be 
With staves, withouten fail, 
Now Frenchmen and others have found the trade 
That yearly of fish there they lade 
Above a hundred sail. 
Experiens, The Four Elements, 1519. 
* J^HE Codfish and its allies constitute, from an economical point of view,. 
the most important of all the families of fishes, containing, as it does, 
a large number of species, most of them of considerable size, distributed 
throughout all parts of the northern hemisphere, usually found together in 
great numbers, readily captured, and easily preserved for future use. 
The codfish is usually found in the North Atlantic, in the North Pacific, 
and in the Polar Ocean, its range extending far beyond the Arctic Circle. 
It seems unnecessary to enumerate all the localities in which it has been 
observed, for its geographical range may be defined with sufficient accu¬ 
racy by a much more comprehensive statement. In the Western 
Atlantic the species occurs in the winter in considerable abundance as 
far south as the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, lat. 37 0 , and stragglers 
