104 Papers from the Department of Marine Biology. 



The use of the name, however, antedates Catesby. Sloane (ii, 

 1725) uses it. Dampier, whose sixth edition (pubUshed 1729) I have, 

 refers to this fish under the name " Parricoota. " Dampier's second 

 visit to Campeachy, where he first saw or at any rate described the 

 " Parricoota, " was made in 1676. In book ii, chapter 2 (p. 144), in 

 which the fish is referred to, Dampier says that ''About the middle of 

 February 75-6, we sailed from Jamaica" for Campeachy and after a 

 short and safe voyage arrived there. Dampier's Voyages are written 

 directly from his manuscript journal, and the accounts on pages 171-2 

 of his printed book are dated 1676, so at least to this date the name 

 Parricoota, a corruption of the apparently native word barracuda, can 

 be traced. Probably a close search of the early Spanish chroniclers 

 and writers on the natural history of the West Indies would show the 

 name in use long before Dampier's time. 



This name, in its various spellings (barracuda, barracouta, barra- 

 cuta, parricoota, paracuta, etc.), has become wide-spread, being the 

 conmion name for the fish wherever found the world around. 



The other colloquial name, picuda, seems to have been given the 

 fish by Parra in 1787. This is a Spanish term, having its root in com- 

 mon with our English word pike, given in plain allusion to the simi- 

 larity in form and habits between this fish and the fresh- water pike. 



The name becune is French in origin, and it will be recalled as the 

 name used by Rochefort, De Tertre, Labat, and Fermin. This is the 

 Gallicized form of the medieval Latin word becuna according to the 

 Century and Standard Dictionaries. However, not being content 

 with this, I asked Professor Miller to pass on these names also, and he 

 kindly writes that becune is French and is borrowed from the Spanish 

 becuna. He notes that the first syllable of these words corresponds 

 to the French word bee, beak of a bird or snout of a fish, and that the 

 Latin word beccus is of GalUc origin. The -une or -una is simply a 

 termination. Hence becune or becuna means beak-fish. 



In this connection, Professor Miller makes the interesting sugges- 

 tion that, since sphyra conveys no suggestion of sharpness or pointed- 

 ness, as does the word cestra, possibly the name may have been given 

 in allusion to the hammer-like swiftness and force of the fish's attack. 

 Then he adds: "The sphyrcena would then be hammer-fish; the cestra, 

 the pickhanmier-fish; the sudis, the stake fish; the becuna {becune), 

 the beak-fish: according to the varying point of view of the observer." 



DRAWINGS OR FIGURES OF THE BARRACUDA. 



The history of the big barracuda has been rather fully given in 

 the course of this paper, and little can be added here. However, it 

 may not be without interest to give some few points about figures of 

 the sphyrsena, both European and American. 



Belon seems to have published the first known figure of the Euro- 

 pean sphyraena, but Cuvier and Valenciennes say that it was incorrectly 



