102 Papers from the Department of Marine Biology. 



The etymology of this name is very obscure. Sphyrcena = hammer- 

 fish is such a misnomer that I set to work to puzzle it out. Rondelet 

 (1558) makes sphyrcena = cestra, a sharpened stake, because of its 

 pointed snout. Cuvier and Valenciennes (1829) cast strong doubt on 

 the hammer-fish derivation and definitely state their belief that cestra 

 (javelin or stake) is a synonym for sphyrcena, in allusion to its pointed 

 snout. This led me back to Conrad Gesner s "Historia Animalium," 

 mi, where was found a wealth of material which is summarized below. 

 In this connection I wish to express my thanks to Professor C. W. E. 

 Miller, of the Johns Hopkins University, to whom I am indebted for 

 translations of and some keenly critical comments upon the names used. 

 These translations and comments have gone far towards clearing up 

 the situation and for confirming; the authors referred to in this para- 

 graph. 



Before dealing with the data found in Gesner, it may be well to state 

 that Aldrovandi (1613) is in full accord with Gesner, whom he quotes 

 in large degree. 



Gesner (1558) quotes the Greek poet and philosopher, Epicharrnus, 

 who flourished at Syracuse about 485 B. C., where he speaks of "ces- 

 tras and shining perches." Next he notes that Speusippus (about 

 407 B. C. to 339 B. C.), the nephew and disciple of Plato, likened the 

 sphyrcena or cestra to the fish called in Latin acus (gar-pike) . Then he 

 finds that Athenseus, the Greek philosopher of Naucrates and Alex- 

 andria, Egypt, in his great work, " Deipnosophistse " (about 200 A. 

 D.), writes that "Dorian says that what they call the cestra is the 

 sphyrcena, and when Epicharmus called it the cestra he no longer said 

 sphyrcena, although they are the same. And the Attic Greeks more 

 often call the sphyrcena the cestra and very seldom use the name sphy- 

 rcena. " These quotations make it clear that the two names were used 

 interchangeably but that cestra gradually came to be used almost 

 exclusively for the fish once called sphyrcena.. 



Thus sphyrcena, cestra (or kestra), and sudis were all used syn- 

 onymously for a certain slender sharp-headed fish recalling the idea 

 of a javelin, a pointed stake, or the prow of a ship. Now there enters on 

 the scene one Theodorus Gaza, a learned Greek scholar who was born 

 about 1400 and who died about 79 years later. The Turks having 

 captured his birth-place, Thessalonica in Macedonia, he was driven 

 into Italy, where he was for many years professor of Greek at Ferrara. 

 Later he moved to Rome and engaged in translating Greek works into 

 Latin, among them Aristotle's "Natural history of animals" (1476). 

 Gaza translated sphyrcena= kestra= sudis by the Latin word malleolus, 

 hammer, and hammerfish it has remained to this day. 



Now the hammerfish is Sphyrna zygcena, the hammerhead shark, and 

 on this point Gesner definitely says that the common codices or texts 

 of his day were full of errors, zygcena being often written for sphyrcena 



