ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 85 
mer in sight of a few dozen dorsal fins cutting through the 
water, a chance to measure and dissect a few specimens, a page 
or two of estimates of annual captures, and perhaps the experi- 
ence of having the side of his boat pierced by one of the ugly 
swords. 
This paper is ‘the fourth of a series upon “ The Natural and 
Economical History of American Food-fishes,” the first, on the 
Scuppaug, and the second, on the Bluefish, having been pub- 
lished by Professor Baird in the Report of the United States 
Fish Commission, Part I. (1873) ; the third, on the Menhaden, in 
Part V. (1879) of the same report. © The History of the Ameri- 
can Whale Fishery,” by Mr. Alexander Starbuck, in Part IV., is 
also properly to be enumerated in this book. 
POPULAR NAMES OF SWORDFISH. 
The names by which the fish under consideration is known all 
have reference to its most prominent feature, the prolonged 
snout. The “Swordfish” of our own tongue, the “ Zwaardafis” of 
the Hollander, the Italian “.Szfo” and “ Pesce-epada,” the Spaniard’s 
“ Espada,” “ Espadarte,” and varied by “Pez de epada” in Cuba, 
and the French “ Zspadon,” ‘‘ Dard,” and “‘ £ipée de mer” are sim- 
ply variations of one theme, repetitions of the “ Gladius ” of an- 
cient Italy and “ Xip/ias,” the name by which Aristotle, the 
father of zoology, called the same fish twenty-three hundred 
years ago. The French “ Empereur,’ and the “ Jmperador ” and 
“Ocean King-fish”’ of the Spanish and French West Indies carry 
out the same idea ; the Roman emperor was always represented 
holding a drawn sword in his hand. The Portuguese names:are 
Agulha and Agulhao, meaning “ needle” or “ needle-fish.” 
ZOOLOGICAL NAMES OF THE SWORDFISH. 
This species has been particularly fortunate in escaping the 
numerous redescriptions to which almost all widely distributed 
forms have been subjected. By the writers of antiquity it was 
spoken of under its Aristotelian name, and in the tenth edition 
of his Systema Nature, at the very inception of binominal nom- 
enclature, Linnzeus called it Xiphias gladius. By this name it has 
