166 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



head " of Williams aud of Josselyn, (iu New England Barities, p. 69, of 

 Tuckeruiau's edition,) and the latter, if known at all to the Narra- 

 gansett Indians in \YilIianis's time, was not common enongh to bring its 

 Indian name to his notice. In a mannsciipt vocabnlary obtained by 

 President iStiles iu 1702, ''from a Pequot Indian at Groton, Connec- 

 ticnt," I find " Tautauge, Blackflsh," which removes all doubt as to the 

 appropriation of the name. In the same vocabulary, or list of names 

 rather, are these: " ?7wj).s«^<^^s, Alewives," [=aumsuog^ R. W.,] '' Ca- 

 cJianxet, Cunners," [our "Ohogset,"] " A<pimmduut, Blue Fish." 



This last I have not found elsewhere. Its occurrence here shows 

 that the Temnodon saUator was no stranger iu Fisher's Island Sound 

 in 1702. 



While at Edgartowu last summer, I heard old fishermen call floun- 

 ders and plaice "buts," distinguishing the species by a prefix. I did not 

 before know that this old English and Dutch name had survived, in 

 popular use, to our time. Palsgrave translates the French " plye" 

 , [plie] by ^^ Butte fysshe,"' and Steendam, the Dutch poet, names the 

 ^^Bot, en Sneck" — plaice and pike — among the fishes of Xew Netherlands 

 in 1601. The Halibut is the "holy-but," (German, heilige-butt,) and we 

 have the same ground-word in " Thorn-butt," aud "Turbot," though 

 the lexicographers stick to the old etvmology from Latin, turbo, a top ; 

 aud in the English " Burt " or "Birt!" 



I forget whether or not I made a note for you on the alleged deriva- 

 tion of "alewife,'' from "n?oo/'" Dr. J. V. C. Smith, in his Natural 

 History of the Fishes of Massachusetts, 1833, was perhaps the first to 

 record the suggestion that " aUunfe is derived from the Indian word 

 aioo/", signifying a bony Jish.^'' Dr. Bartlett's Dictionary of American- 

 isms, Webster's, and, I believe, Worcester's, Dictionaries accept this 

 etymology, and Professor Scheie De Vere, in his recently published vol- 

 ume of " Americanisms," is misled into recognizing in " alewife" a "most 

 ludicrous corruption of the Narragansett term aloof\'' though he appears 

 to have been struck by the objection that neither I nor /can have a 

 place in a Narragansett word, and he suggests that the origiual name 

 may have been ainoop. 



Tiie Narragansett and Massachusetts name of the alewife and herring 

 (common to several species) was Aumsu-og, (plur.,) as noted by Roger 

 Williams and, with slight dialectic variation, by President Stiles, as you 

 have seen. The only authoritj" for " aloof" is a letter of (the se,cond 

 John Winthrop, printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1078, (No.) 

 142,) in which he mentions the use of " the fishes called aJoofes^^ for 

 manuring corn-fields. If we could refer to Wnithrop's manuscript, I 

 am confident we should find that a copyist or i^rinter had substituted 

 "aloofes" for '-'• aloof es^'' i. e., aloses or alises. The modern English 

 "allis" was in old French and old English "alouze" or "aloose,' 

 nearer than the moderii form of the name to Latin alausa. Morton's 

 New England Canaan, (1637) mentions the use of the "fish by some 

 called shadds, by some allizes,^^ as fertilizers. 



Forty years before Winthrop's letter was written from Connecticut, 

 Wood, in New England's Prospect, (London, 1031,) catalogues "big- 

 bellied Alewives," with "consorting Herrings and the bony Shad," 

 among the fishes of Massachusetts; aud Josselyn (New England Rari- 

 ties, p. 23) names the "Alize Alewife, because great-bellied,^'' with the 

 synonymes " Olafle, Oldwife, Allow." In his "Voyages" (1671) he 

 describes this fish as "like a Herring, but has a bigger bellie, therefore 

 called an Alewife." 



Couch, I see, gives '■'■Alewife'''' and '•^ Maid'^ as popular names of the 



