Sphyrcena barracuda; its Morphology, Habits, and History. 103 



and vice versa. The hammerhead shark gets its name (sphyrna, ham- 

 mer; zygcena, yoke) because the laterally elongated lobes of its head 

 stand out from the body, giving the head end of the fish the shape of the 

 Greek letter r. Further, Gesner says that at Marseilles there was a 

 hammer-fish called Jew-fish, which by many was thought to be a sphy- 

 rcena but which was really a zygcena. Then he quotes the French 

 ichthyologist Gilles, that the hammer-fish of Marseilles was a zygcena, 

 and that it was called a Jew-fish because its lateral head projections 

 much resembled a kind of head-dress having lateral horns formerly 

 worn by certain Jews of that city. Furthermore, it is interesting to 

 note that the specific name given to the hammerhead shark by many 

 ichthyologists is or was malleus (hammer). From all this we may 

 easily see how the names were confused. 



However, this etymological tangle is not so easily unraveled as the 

 preceding paragraph seems to show. Sphyrcena probably has its 

 origin in the word sphyra, which means hammer. Gaza gives as a 

 synonym the Latin word malleolus, and this has added further to the 

 complexity. The word malleolus means a little hammer, and Professor 

 Miller writes me that it is neo-Latin for the tibia and fibula with their 

 enlarged ends. These in Greek are represented by the word sphyron, 

 which also means hammer. And so it seems that we have come to a 

 cul de sac. Now let us return to cestra and see what we can get from it. 



Pollex (born at Naucrates, Egypt, about 130 A. D.) has left us a 

 dictionary of Greek words in which "cestra" is defined as "a certain 

 kind of hammer"; but what kind? Professor Gildersleeve writes that 

 it was "an agricultural implement employed in breaking up clods." 

 And Professor Miller says that it was a double-headed hammer, flat 

 on one head and with the other pointed, a pick hammer or "Spitz- 

 hammer," such as geologists use. Such hammers are figured among 

 the illustrations in archeological works. Now the error of preceding 

 writers is clear. Deriving sphyrcena from sphyra, hammer, and either 

 overlooking cestra in its meaning of javelin, or using cestra as hammer 

 without going into critical study of what kind of hammer, they have in 

 all cases made Sphyrcena the hammerfish, when it should be the pick- 

 hammer fish, the name being given not in allusion to the hammer end 

 of the tool but to the pick end. Hence Sphyrcena is not the hammer- 

 fish but the pickhammer fish, and it is seen that the name plainly 

 alludes to the shape of the head and snout, and that it is a synonym 

 for cestra and for sudis. 



On the origin of the specific name, barracuda, I regret that I am 

 unable to throw any light. Walbaum in 1792 seems to have first used 

 it for the name of the species. So struck was he with the similarity 

 of this fish to the fresh-water pike, that he named it Esox barracuda. 

 He, however, simply gave his so-called "pike" the native name barra- 

 cuda with which Catesby had labeled his drawing from a Bahama 

 specimen in 1731. 



