373 



DISTRIBUTION AND GENERAL NOTES ON THE SPECIES 



for this usage. 'Pampano' is applied to S.fiatola in Spain to-day (Navarro et al. 1943, p. 132) and, 

 as we have seen, the diminutive form 'pampanito' has been applied to our S. mactilatiis in South 

 America, while Palotneta simillima is sometimes called the 'California pompano'. Both words are 

 much more widely used to describe Trachinotus spp., and apart from encouraging possibilities with 

 Stromateus maculatus, the Stromateidae to which they have been applied are unimportant species. 

 If there is any choice of vernacular names, therefore, I feel that ' pampano ', ' pompano ' or ' pampanito ' 

 should be confined to Trachinotus spp., clearly distinguishable from Stromateidae by the presence of 

 pelvic fins in the adult. 



' Butterfishes ' has strong claims as the best alternative for Stromateidae, as the most widely accepted 

 common name of the most important species, Poronotus triacanthiis. Unfortunately the habitat of this 

 species overlaps that of Peprilus alepidotus and, as shown in Table 37, both species share a wide range 

 of vernacular names in the eastern U.S.A. It would be undesirable to take any step that might extend 

 the sphere of confusion that may result from this, for as can be seen from Table 38, the name ' butter- 

 fish ' is also in current use for very widely different fishes in other English-speaking countries. 



There remains the possibility of using the name ' pomfret ' for Stromateidae, with suitable prefixes. 

 In favour of this one may urge that the usage is already widely current in eastern waters where the 

 family attains an economic importance second only to that of Poronotus triacanthus} Drepane punctata, 

 the ' chicken-basket pomfret ' of Hong Kong, need not deter us ; for that is merely an attempted literal 

 translation of a Chinese name, the fish is relatively unimportant and is already well named the ' con- 

 certina fish' in Natal. (Here we see, however, that confusion of fishes of different families under the 

 same vernacular names takes place in Chinese as well as in the European languages.) ' Yellow-wax 

 pomfret' for Trachinotus blochii is similarly an attempted literal rendition from the Chinese, and it 

 appears that there is already a tendency to replace it by ' pompano'. (With advantage, as I think; cf. 

 Herklots and Lin, 1938, p. 21.) 



A far more serious objection lies in the use of ' pomfret ' for Bramidae by a great ichthyologist like 

 Jordan, but I cannot discover that the Bramidae (of which the type species is widely known as ' Ray's 

 bream') are sufficiently common to be of much economic importance anywhere, so that there is not 



1 It is even probable that the far eastern pomfrets may be relatively more important than Poronotus, but in con- 

 sidering far eastern fishes we have only limited local data to go by, in contrast to the superb U.S. statistics. 



