A Presidential Fish—The Tautog or Blackfish 19 
origin and first appears in Roger Will- 
jams’ ‘Key to the American Lan- 
guage,” printed in 1643, but this fish is 
known by many local names. In New 
England ‘‘tautog” prevails; on the 
New York coast it is called ‘‘ blackfish ;” 
in New Jersey, ‘‘ black bass” and 
‘* smooth blackfish’’ and sometimes 
‘“chub.”’ On the eastern shore of Vir- 
ginia itis known as ‘‘moll” or ‘‘ Will 
George;” at the mouth of the Chesa- 
peake it isthe ‘‘saltwater chub,” and in 
North Carolina, the ‘‘ oyster fish.” The 
tautog is widely distributed along the 
Atlantic shores, extending as far south 
as South Carolina; it is a venerable fish, 
having been known to the anglers of 
Rhode Island for over two hundred 
and fifty years, and it is said that 
Daniel Webster took great delight in 
fishing for them half a century ago. 
Mitchell, one of the earliest and most 
observant of American ichthyologists, 
states that the Boston markets were full 
of them in 1814. From these facts, the 
tautog, with his centuries of experience, 
should be conversant with all the wiles 
of the fisherman, but he is a dull-witted 
fish and takes freely almost any bait 
offered; in fact his lack of intelligence 
and caution is on a par with the same de- 
ficiency in all of his salt water congeners 
—they feed hoggishly when hungry, the 
ratio of sport to be had out of any of 
them being graded solely by their 
fighting qualities, for which the tautog 
should be only moderately credited. 
But little is known of the habits of 
the fishes of the salt water, and those of 
the tautog are, to a great extent, con- 
jectural. That it spawns from April to 
September has been ascertained, but 
where, when and how it spawns is yet 
unknown. The young are of compara- 
tively slow growth, a fact that has been 
ascertained by watching them in con- 
finement where plenty of food was given 
them. Although these fishes thrive in 
cold water, they, like most of our coast 
fishes, appear to seek refuge from too 
low a temperature by retreating to the 
warmer and deeper water, it being the 
opinion of fish savants that the Gulf 
Stream along the Atlantic belt shelters, 
during winter, most of the species of our 
coast, those at least that are not migra- 
tory like the bluefish, mackerel and 
the herring, and possibly the Spanish 
mackerel. Certainly the sheepshead, 
weakfish, sea bass and striped bass do 
not roam far from our shores, and the 
latter is found in numbers, during the 
cold season, in the deep waters of the 
Hudson river near Sing Sing, where 
they are caught of large size in nets by 
the market fishermen, who call them 
‘* sow bass,” from the fact that those 
taken are mostly female fish and are 
found full of spawn. One observant 
fisherman tells us that the tautog ap- 
pears to enter into an actual state of 
hibernation during freezing weather, 
ceasing to feed, with the vital functions 
entirely suspended, This we can readily 
believe, as we saw in the Government’s 
saltwater aquaria, at the World’s Fair 
last year, a tautog that deliberately laid 
down flat upon its side on the bottom of 
the tank, and, although it did not snore 
or close its eyes, its condition was about 
as near a siesta as that of any other ani- 
mal ever seen by us, either in or out of 
the water, This somniferous repose of 
the tautog occurred when the thermom- 
eter was high up in the eighties, and 
all nature was in full bloom. There was 
no hibernation in this case, the fish 
looked simply tired out or lazy, and 
wanted ‘‘a rest.” . It might be par- 
doned for a grosser sin, when we con- 
sider the hurly-burly rampant in the 
white and windy city at the time. 
