Chambers. — The Maskinonge. 175 



On a taut line, the maskinonge often leaps clear of the water, and 

 being a powerful fish, requires at this time very careful handling. 

 The great difficulty, with light tackle, is to keep the maskinonge 

 from running into and entangling himself in the weeds, rushes, 

 or sunken tree tops in which he probably lay concealed when he 

 rushed for the angler's bait. This cannot always be done, but there 

 is sport in trying it and good assistance can be rendered the fisher- 

 man by his guide, who should know enough to pull for deep water 

 immediately a fish is hooked. The rod should not be more than 

 nine feet in length, and eleven or twelve ounces in weight, but the 

 hook should be fastened to the line on a gimp snell, for the teeth 

 of the fish render gut impossible of success. 



Discussion. 



Mr. G. C. Leach, Washington, D. C. : This matter of nomenclature 

 in fish culture as applied to fish is a very important one. Some of our 

 fishes in the United States that are known by certain names in the north- 

 ern sections are entirely unknown, so far as those names are concerned, in 

 southern sections. For instance, our trout in the northern sections are not 

 so designated in the southern portions of the United States, but the bass 

 down there are called trout. It would be a very good thing, both in the 

 United States and in Canada, if we could have some uniformity of nomen- 

 clature. But I suppose, as Mr. Chambers explains, these names are handed 

 down through different races — the Indians, the French Canadians and Eng- 

 lish — with the result that some differences creep in, and after a few genera- 

 tions the name becomes changed. I think Mr. Chambers' paper in a very 

 interesting one and bears on a subject to which more attention ought to 

 be paid. 



Dr. E. E. Pbince, Ottawa, Canada: The fact that we have had a 

 paper like this, upon a literary phase of the fisheries, is an illustration of 

 the variety of topics covered In the discussions and proceedings of the 

 Society. I have great sympathy with Mr. Chambers' contention. He re- 

 ferred to an old official report of mine on "The Vernacular Names of 

 Fishes," in which I showed how utterly hopeless it was to understand what 

 we were talking about when we used popular names. 



As Commissioner of Fisheries for Canada, almost every year I have 

 this question put to me : What is a pike, and what is a pickerel ? It is onll 

 of those questions almost impossible to answer, because you must first of 

 all ask the questioner : What do you mean by a pike, and what do you mean 

 by a pickerel? We in Canada use certain names in one sense, while in 

 the United States they are used in another. I may say that eleven or twelve 

 years ago Dr. David Starr Jordan and myself had the task assigned to us 

 by our respective governments of drawing up international regulations for 

 the contiguous waters of Canada and the United States. We decided upon a 

 list oi the names which we would use in our regulations, and when Dr. 

 Jordan heard m) arguments — which were very much the same as Mr. 



