10 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



prosecute the winter shad fisheries on the Saint John's, and these same 

 names are more or less familiar all along the coast wherever the north- 

 ern coasters and fishing vessels are known. 



The name preferable for adoption. 



19. The adoption of some one suitable name for popular use is emi- 

 nently desirable. " Menhaden" is the name most generally known, as 

 well as the most distinctive. It has the additional recommendation of 

 having been derived from an aboriginal language. It has been used 

 in the titles of the two manufacturers' associations, and it is hoped 

 that this usage will soon be conformed to by all. 



Tradenames. 



20. Among the manufacturers in Port Monmouth, N. J., who prepare 

 the menhaden as an article of food, a number of trade-names are in use, 

 such as " American sardine" (in distinction from the European fish, which 

 is prepared in a similar manner), " shadine," and " ocean trout." * 



Etymologies. 



21. A few words concerning the origin of the above-mentioned names 

 may not be out of place. "Pogy" and "menhaden" are derived some- 

 what remotely from the Indian dialects of New England, the latter 

 apparently from that in use in Massachusetts and Ehode Island, the 

 former from a more northern source. The writer is indebted to Prof. J. 

 Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, Conn., for the following very sugges- 

 tive letter : 



* This fanciful name haa been the occasion of many erroneous statements. In the 

 New York Times for April 12, 1874, appeared an article entitled " American Sardines," 

 which contained the following hit of biography : " The fish selected as the substitute for 

 the sardine of Europe is the menhaden, more commonly known as the moss-bunker, and 

 the scientific name of which is Triitta Oceana, or ocean-trout. Its color is silver, spotted 

 with dark brown, and in the night-time assumes a reddish or fiery tinge. They abound 

 in the seas east of the Canadas and in the bays and deep rivers which indent the New 

 Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia coasts, and from which they migrate in 

 the spring of the year to the southward, and appear in great shoals along the coast of 

 Long Island and in the Raritan and Lower New York bays. A mile or two to the north- 

 ward of Sandy Hook is iheir favorite feeding-ground for the spring and summer, and 

 thither they rendezvous toward the close of April in vast schools, numbering millions. 

 They invariably come on with the warm weather, and remain until fall. Then- breed- 

 ing time is late in the winter," &c. These ridiculous statements, evidently compiled 

 in part from j)rinted accounts of the sea-trout {Sahno immaculaius, Storer) of the North, 

 partly from the statements of the menhaden fishermen, but principally from the imagi- 

 naiion of the writer, would perhaps not be worthy of notice had they not been copied 

 by the European newspapers. A translation, with emendations which make it still 

 more absurd, app eared in Das Ausland for August 17, 1874. The Stuttgart paper emends 

 its name to Truita trutta, and states that it resembles in color the brook-trout to which 

 it is very closely allied. 



