322 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 506. 



tlement by English in the state. Captain 

 John Smith, who acquired celebrity in con- 

 nection with a more southern province, 

 having induced certain London merchants 

 to furnish him with two vessels for explora- 

 tion of the New England coast, in the 

 ■•spring of 1614, visited and made a sketch 

 map of part of the coast of territory 

 granted to the Plymouth Company. In 

 ' A Description of New England, ' published 

 in 1616, he enumerated the fishes. Ex- 

 cluding the 'whales, grampus, porkpisces' 

 or porpoises, and the shell-fish, the names of 

 sixteen were mentioned — 'turbut, sturgion, 

 cod, hake, haddock, cole, cusk, or small 

 ling, shark, mackerrell, herring, mullet, 

 base, pinacks, cunners, perch, eels.' In 

 another paragraph, we are told, 'miich 

 salmon some haue found vp 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. 

 So halfe the labor in hooking, splitting, 

 and turning, is saued.' He in short takes 

 a very practical view of the subject, and 

 has quaintly expressed it. "And is it not 

 pretty sport," says he, "to pvU 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 hun- 

 dred cods: which dressed & dryed, if they 

 be sould there for ten shillings the hun- 

 dred, though in England they will giue 

 more than twentie ; may not both the 

 seruant, the master, & marchant, be well 

 content with this gaine 1 " 



Doubtless such a report had some in- 

 fluence in determining the trend of immi- 

 gration into Massachusetts, and one of the 

 newcomers, 'a reverend Divine' (Francis 

 Higginson), was ready to confirm Smith's 

 praise, and wrote, in 1630, ' The abound- 

 ance of Sea-Fish are [Sic] almost beyond 

 beleeuing, & sure I should scarce haue 



beleeued it except I had scene it with mine 

 owne Eyes.' 



Numerous other chroniclers testified to 

 the richness of the New England 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 pres- 

 ent occasion at least, to give further atten- 

 tion to such lists, but the common names 

 introduced by the early settlers furnish an 

 interesting theme for consideration. 



The known fishes of England are few in 

 number, and the emigrants knew few of 

 them even, and knew those few very im- 

 perfectly. When the earliest of those emi- 

 grants 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 unpre- 

 pared 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 niimerous fishes they trans- 

 ferred names of English species with which 

 they were more or less familiar. On ac- 

 count of the greater number of species, or 

 at least of genera, common to the two 

 countries, the emigrants from Old England 

 to New England were not very far astray 

 in naming many of the fishes of their new 

 home; but as they, or their successors, 

 wandered farther and farther from their 

 old home, they made many mistakes. A 



