168 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 
A related species, though of a different genus, was found by the new 
settlers of Massachusetts and New York, and quite properly called 
_bass or striped bass; it is the 22occus lineatus of modern ichthyolo- 
gists. There are several other species, including the white perch, also 
entitled to the name. All others are quite remote from the true bass— 
even the black-basses. These last, however, must retain the name, 
and it might be better to use always the hyphenated form, i. e., black- 
bass. 
Trout is another of the English names variously misapplied. In the 
old country it is given toa single species generally distributed through 
the island in clear cold streams. The Pilgrims found in similar streams 
in Massachusetts a fish somewhat like it, and called it by the same name, 
although if good Isaak Walton or some other angler had been among 
them, he might have told them it was not a trout but a char. Others 
found in Maine land-locked salmon, and in various large lakes another 
good-sized salmonid (Cristivomer namaycush), and applied to them 
also the name of trout, but often with a qualifying prefix, as schoodie, 
or sebago trout, and lake trout. The old specific name was thus applied 
to representatives of three distinct genera; but the offense was venial, 
as the genera are closely related and belong to the same family. But 
this was not the case with others. Settlers in troutless Southern States, 
bound to give the name to some fish, gave it to the centrarchoid fishes 
generally known as black-basses. This perversion even found its way 
into scientific literature, for ‘* Citizen Bose,” French consul at Charles- 
ton a little more than a century ago, sent specimens to Paris, with the 
information that it was called trout, and ‘‘ Citizen Lacépéede” gave it the 
specific name [AMcropterus| salmoides. Along the southern coast, too, 
the name trout or sea trout was given to scienoid fishes of the genus 
Cynoscion. When the Americans reached the Californian coast they 
found certain fishes of a peculiar family (hexagrammids), not at all 
like trout in shape or fins, but spotted, and these also they called trout. 
Still another fish, found in the Gila River, a slender large-mouthed 
eyprinid, Gila gracilis, was called trout by early explorers, and still 
bears the name. 
But this is not all, or the worst! These old names are not only 
widely scattered; they may be more or less accumulated on one fish. 
We need only take those already considered as instances. 
Cod and trout are given to the same hexagrammids along the Pacifie 
coast. The //exvagrammus decagrammus, for instance, is called rock 
cod about Puget Sound, and rock trout and sea trout at San Francisco. 
Bass may also be given in some places, as a somewhat related fish, less 
like a bass (Sebastodes melanops), is called black-bass. 
Trout, bass, and perch are also given to the black-basses, as already 
indicated, in various places in the Southern States. 
Our forefathers likewise brought with them fish names which have 
become almost obsolete in England, but which have entered on a new 
