Ling.
Cod.
The Cod-family, to which among others, the Dorse, the Haddock, the Whiting, the Hake, the Ling, and other valuable fishes belong, ranks next to that of the herrings in importance to man. In the seas with which Europeans are best acquainted the common Cod, the chief representative of the tribe, is found universally, from Iceland to very nearly as far south as Gibraltar, but appears most abundantly on the eastern side of the American continent, and among its numerous islands, from 40° up to 66° N. lat., where it may be said to hold dominion from the outer edge of the great banks of Newfoundland, which are more than three hundred miles from land, to the verge of every creek and cove of the bounding coast. To support such a mass of living beings, the ocean sends forth its periodical masses of other living beings. At one season the cod is accompanied by countless myriads of the Capelin (Salmo arcticus), and at another by equal hosts of a molluscous animal, the Cuttle-fish (Sepia loligo), called in Newfoundland the squid. The three animals are migratory, and man, who stations himself on the shore for their combined destruction, conducts his movements according to their migrations, capturing millions upon millions of capelins and squids, to serve as a bait for the capture of millions of cods. In the United Kingdom alone this fish, in the catching, the curing, the partial consumption, and sale, supplies employment, food, and profit to thousands of the human race; but the banks of Newfoundland are the chief scene of its destruction. As soon as spring appears, England sends forth 2000 ships, with 30,000 men, across the Atlantic, towards those teeming shallows; France about one-half the number; and the Americans as many as both together. On an average, each ship is reckoned to catch about 40,000 fishes; and we may form some idea of the voracity, as well as of the numbers of the cod, when we hear that in the course of a single day a good fisherman is able to haul up four hundred one after another with his line—no easy task considering the size of the fish, which often attains a length of from two to three feet and a weight of from twenty to forty pounds.
The captured fish have but little time left them to bewail their lot, for a few thousands will be "dressed down"—that is, gutted, boned and salted—in the course of two or three hours. For this purpose the crew divide themselves into throaters, headers, splitters, salters, and packers. First the throater passes his sharp knife across the throat of the unfortunate cod to the bone and rips open the bowels. He then passes it quickly to the header, who with a strong sudden wrench pulls off the head and tears out the entrails, which he casts overboard, passing at the same time the fish instantly to the splitter, who with one cut lays it open from head to tail, and almost in the twinkling of an eye with another cut takes out the backbone. After separating the sounds, which are placed with the tongues, and packed in barrels as a great delicacy, the backbone follows the entrails overboard, while the fish at the same moment is passed with the other hand to the salter. Such is the amazing quickness of the operations of heading and splitting that a good workman will often decapitate and take out the entrails and backbone of six fish in a minute. Every fisherman is supposed to know something of each of these operations, and no rivals at cricket ever entered with more ardour into their work than do some athletic champions for the palm of "dressing down" after a "day's catch."
Besides its excellent firm flesh, the liver-oil of the cod is used as a valuable medicine, and serves to restore many a scrofulous or rickety child to health. The sound-bladder is also employed by the Icelanders for the manufacture of fish-lime or isinglass. The best quality of the latter article, however, is afforded by a species of Sturgeon (Accipenser Huso) which is chiefly found in the Black and Caspian seas, and ascends the tributary rivers in immense numbers.
The Common Sturgeon (Accipenser sturio), though principally frequenting the seas and rivers of North-Eastern Europe, where, especially in the Volga, extensive fisheries are established for its destruction, is also captured on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland, as examples are by no means uncommon in the fish-mongers' shops of our great cities, a few coming into the hands of the principal dealers every season. Yarrell mentions one caught in a stake-net near Findhorn, in Scotland, in July 1833, which measured eight feet six inches in length and weighed two hundred and three pounds; but in the Baltic specimens of a length of eighteen feet and weighing a thousand pounds have occasionally been captured. The body is long and slender from the shoulders backward, somewhat pentagonal in shape, with five longitudinal rows of flattened plates, with pointed central spines, directed backwards, and the snout is tapering and beak-shaped, the mouth small and toothless, so that the sturgeon, though almost equalling the white shark in size, is of a much more harmless character and formidable only to the crustaceans, small fish, or soft animals, he meets with at the bottom in deep water, beyond the ordinary reach of sea-nets. Hence he is rarely caught in the open sea, but falls an easy prey to the cunning of man when entering the friths, estuaries, and rivers for the purpose of spawning. The sturgeon is a highly valuable fish not only for its well-flavoured flesh but also for its roe, which furnishes the delicate caviar of commerce. The smallest but most highly esteemed of the sturgeons is the Sterlet of the Volga, which sometimes fetches such extravagant prices that Prince Potemkin has been known to pay three hundred roubles for a single tureen of sterlet-soup.
Common Sturgeon.