THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE WEAKFISH 



By Theodore Gill 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society: I did not 

 anticipate being called upon this afternoon, and, conse- 

 quently, I did not come prepared with my paper, but I will 

 give orally the essentials of w^hat I have written. 



Every once in a while I receive a letter asking what is the 

 weakfish; every once in a while in Washington I am 

 appealed to orally to know what the trout is. It is only a 

 few weeks since a lady wrote me saying that her family 

 had a country place in Maryland which they occupied during 

 the summer, and that they could get no fish but so-called 

 trout ; she knew what a trout was very well and knew that 

 the fish which they called trout and which sold as trout 

 was not a true trout ; and she asked me what it was. I told 

 her. Now the so-called trout of the Southern States and 

 of the Atlantic States from Pennsylvania southward, is not 

 at all related to the true trout, but is a member of an 

 entirely distinct family and even a distinct primary division 

 or order. 



Our nomenclature of fishes generally is a very mixed 

 one, and several different modes have been adopted in fram- 

 ing and applying popular names. One (and the most 

 natural one) is to name the fish after that which is — or is 

 supposed to be — most like it. That was the plan adopted 

 especially in the New England States. When the pilgrims 

 proceeded to New England they found a number of fishes 

 which they thought were like the ones they knew at home, 

 and, consequently, they applied the names familiar to them, 

 and misapplied many of them. Many of the names, of 

 course, did fit, such as the trout, codfish, and several others. 

 Naturally they applied because the American fishes were 

 almost the same as, or at least, very closely related to, the 

 fish of England. The trout of our northern waters, indeed, 



