166 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 
herring, mullet, base, pinacks, cunners, perch, eels.” In another par- 
agraph, we are told, ‘‘much salmon some haue found yp the Riuers, 
as they haue passed.” Smith claims for the cod that ‘‘ each hundred 
is as good as two or three hundred in the New-found Land. 5o halfe 
the labor in hooking, splitting, and turning, is saued.” He, in short, 
takes a very practical view of the subject, and las quaintly expressed 
it. ‘‘And is it not pretty sport,” says he, ‘‘to pvll vp two pence, six 
pence, and twelue pence, as fast as you can hale & veare a line? He 
is a very bad fisher, cannot kill in one day with his hooke & line, one, 
two, or three hundred cods: which dressed & dryed, if they be sould 
there for ten shillings the hundred, though in England they will giue 
more than twentie; may not both the seruant, the master, & marchant, 
be well content with this gaine?” 
Doubtless such a report had some influence in determining the trend 
of immigration into Massachusetts, and one of the newcomers, ‘‘a 
reverend Divine” (Francis Higginson), was ready to confirm Smith’s 
praise, and wrote, in 1630, ‘‘The aboundance of Sea-Fish are [sic] 
almost beyond beleeuing, & sure I should scarce haue beleeued it 
except I had seene it with mine owne Eyes.” 
Numerous other chroniclers testified to the richness of the New Eng- 
land seas and gave lists of the fishes. The most lengthy of the lists 
is that in ‘‘An Account of two voyages to New England” by * John 
Josselyn Gent.,” published in 1675; this includes sixty-five names, of 
which forty-six are those of what we would now call fishes. This list, 
which is simply a nominal one, supplements slight descriptive notices 
of eight others which precede it. 
It would scarcely repay us, on the present occasion, at least, to give 
further attention to such lists, but the common names introduced by 
the early settlers furnish an interesting theme for consideration. 
Ii. 
The known fishes of England are few, and the emigrants knew few 
of them even, and knew those few very imperfectly. When the ear- 
liest of those emigrants lived, naturalists even had no idea of the 
diversity of animal life or the facts of geographical distribution. For 
instance, John Ray, the best naturalist of his age, who flourished in 
the last quarter of the same century, thought that there were only 
‘*near 500” fishes in the whole world! Naturally, the common people 
were unprepared to appreciate the diversity of the new life which they - 
were to see. 
The immigrants were astonished at the abundance of the fishes about 
their new home. To these numerous fishes they transferred names of 
English species with which they were more or less familiar. On 
account of the greater number of species, or at least of genera, com- 
mon to the two countries, the emigrants from old England to New 
