COMMON NAMES OF THE BASSES AND SUN-FISHES. 857 



ill) woudor that tlioy boar luaiiy of the saino coinmon iiaiiies, altliouuli 

 each has some particuhii- appoUations. 



"Strawberry bass and calioo bass soein to be very ai»})r()iti-iate (h'sig- 

 natioiis for Pomoxi.s s^xo'oides and have the additional advanta.ui' of 

 being ah'eady ginierall}' in use in a hxrge district." ((Tooih'.l b'or 

 Pontoris annuJaris, crappie may be recommended. 



The names "eanipbellite" and "newlight," whicli appear to have 

 originated in Kentucky and to have spread thence to Indiana and 

 Illinois, are said by (TOode(33) to have been given to P. cumnlaris "by 

 the irreverent during the great Campbellite movement in the West 

 nearly half a century ago," and Klippart (35) shows the origin of the 

 name in Kentucky by recalling that the fish "appeared in the w^atei'S 

 of that State simultaneously with the advent of the disciples of Rev. 

 Alexander Campbell." These names are seldom heard nowadays, 

 but are carried along in the books on fishes and are interesting 

 nomenclatural relics. That they have not entirelj^ died out, liowever, 

 is shown by the fact that as late as Januarj^, 1903, the Fish Commis- 

 sion received from Kentucky an application for "newlights" for 

 stocking a pond, and Dr. S. P. Bartlett, of the XJ. S. Fish Commission 

 station at Quincj^ 111., reports that he has occasionally heard the 

 name "campbellite " in that State. Klippart attaches these names to 

 P. sparoides, but other writers have restricted them to P. annularis. 



Monsieur Montpetit ("Les poissons d'eau douce du Canada") thus 

 discusses the names crappie and crapet: 



Crapet? Nothing similar exists in any French dictionary to designate a fish. I 

 have reason to believe that the American word crappie is simply a transforma- 

 tion by the ear of the Canadian word crapet, which must have been applied to 

 this fish a long time before the colonists of New England could have known it. 

 Whether this fish took the name of C7'appie in the limpid waters of the Great 

 Lakes or in the miiddy waters of the mouths of the Mississippi, there is not less 

 reason to believe that this name is only the alteraticyi of the French word crapet 

 which was given to it, either in Canada or Louisiana, a century and more before 

 the English had become acquainted with it. Ah! le crapet! That is an essen- 

 tially Canadian expression which we have all heard from the mouth of our mother, 

 when for some teasing trick or mischievoiis act she threatened us with soft and 

 affectionate blows. Ah! le crapet! Which meant: " No matter by what end he 

 is taken, he is always bristling, ready to do us an injiiry — he is a crapet." 



The euphonious French name sac-a-lait (bag of milk) which is heard 

 in the low-er Mississippi Valley and now aj)parently is applied to other 

 centrarchids as well as to P. annularis, to which it w^as originally 

 given, has been corrupted to "suckley perch" in Louisiana near New 

 Orleans. John Demon and shad, names mentioned bj^ Mr. Goode as 

 being applied to the crappie, have not recently been heard, and their 

 geographical distribution is unknown to the compiler. According 

 to Professor Evermann, tin-mouth and paper-mouth are names now 

 often heard in Indiana, the former having reference to the color of 

 the inside of the mouth of the crappie, the latter to tlie fact that the 

 mouth tears easily when hooked. 



