FISHES OF NEW YORK 571 



Ventral about one half as long as the head, reaching to below 

 the seventh spine of the dorsal. 



D. X, I, 26 to 29; A. I, 11 to 13; scales 8-78-17, about 66 pores 

 in lateral line. 



Silvery, darker above and marked with many small, irregular 

 dark blotches, some of which form undulating lines running- 

 downward and forward; back and head with bright reflections; 

 dorsal and caudal fins dusky; ventrals, anal, and lower edge of 

 caudal yellowish, sometimes speckled. The young show traces 

 of a few dusky bands on the sides, one under the spinous dorsal 

 being most plainly marked, and extending to below the median 

 line. 



The weakfish, so called in Dr Mitchill's Fishes of New York, 

 appears also in his report as the squeteague and checouts, the 

 former being a Narragansett Indian name and the latter derived 

 from the Mohegans. The Narragansett name is sometimes 

 spelled scuteeg. Chickwick is the Connecticut name for the 

 species; on Cape Cod, because of the sound produced by the 

 fish, it is called the drummer; large weakfish in Buzzards bay 

 are termed yellow fins. In Great Egg Harbor bay the name blue- 

 fish is applied to it, notwithstanding the presence of the real 

 bluefish (P m a t o m u s). On our southern coast we hear the 

 names trout, with its variations gray trout, sea trout, shad 

 trout, sun trout and salt-water trout. The latter name is used 

 to distinguish it from the fresh-water trout of the southern 

 states, which is the black bass. Dr Mitchill thus accounts for 

 the name weakfish: "He is called weakfish, as some say, be 

 cause he does not pull very hard after he is hooked; or, as others 

 allege, because laboring men who are fed upon him are weak by 

 reason of the deficient nourishment in that kind of food." De 

 Kay explains the name from the feeble resistance the fish makes 

 on the hook and the facility with which it breaks away from it 

 by reason of its delicate structure. At the time of De Kay's 

 writing in 1842, and for some years previously, the weakfish 

 was present on our coast in diminished numbers. The blue- 

 fish was then present in abundance and the disappearance of the 



