Sbptembek 9, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



323 



few examples of the very many will illus- 

 trate. 



Among the most common of the English 

 fishes are the cod, perch, bass and trout. 

 The immigrants into Massachusetts applied 

 these names to fishes of the same genera as 

 the originals, or to very closely related 

 genera, but mostly of different species. As 

 population extended into remoter regions 

 and stranger faunas, the meager supply of 

 names had to be doled out to forms quite 

 unlike those to which they had been orig- 

 inally applied. 



Cod was used in a few cases for the only 

 fresh-water species of the same family— 

 Lota maculosa, otherwise called burbot; 

 but when the Americans reached the Pacific 

 coast, not finding the true cod, they mis- 

 applied its name to fishes of very different 

 families, although generally with qualify- 

 ing prefixes. Thus, the young of the boc- 

 caccio (a seorpsenoid fish, Seiastodes pau- 

 cispinis), which were caught at the wharves 

 of San Francisco, were dubbed, tom-cods ; 

 a hexagrammoid fish (Hexagrammus deca- 

 grammus), also inaptly named spotted rock 

 trout, was by others called rock cod; an- 

 other species (Ophiodon elongatus) was 

 designated as the cod or 'codfish where the 

 true cod is unknown,' and, where it is 

 known, the eultus cod. 



Perch was subject to much greater mis- 

 use. In England the name is specifically 

 applied to a well-known fresh- water fish. 

 (Perca fluviatilis). The immigrants into 

 New England found a fish almost undis- 

 tinguishable from it, and properly gave it 

 the same name. Others gave it to fishes 

 having no real resemblance; such is the 

 one called also white perch along the At- 

 lantic coast, which is a bass (Morone amer- 

 icana) ; others are scisenids, as the silver 

 perch (Bairdiella chrysura), the gray perch 

 (Pogonias chromis) and the white perch of 

 the Ohio River (Aplodinotus grunniens) ; 

 another, the red perch (Sehastes marinus), 



is a scorpffinid; and still another, the blue 

 perch {Tautogolabrus burgall), a wrasse or 

 labrid. The name is also given in some 

 places to various species of a family pe- 

 culiar to America, the centrarchids, and 

 among them to the black basses and the 

 sunfishes. Along the Pacific coast it is 

 given to viviparous fishes or embiotocids, 

 especially, in California, to the alfione 

 {Bhachochiliis toxotes), and in Oregon and 

 Washington to another, likewise miscalled 

 porgee {Damalichthys argyrosomus) . The 

 Sacramento River embiotocid {Hysterocar- 

 pus traskii) is caUed river perch or simply 

 perch. 



Bass is applied to so many different spe- 

 cies—a score and more— that we can not 

 spare the room to enumerate them. In 

 England it is the proper name of a marine 

 fish common only along the southern coast, 

 formerly called Labrax lupus, but now 

 named Dicentrarchus labrax. 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 Boccus line- 

 atus of modern ichthyologists. 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 n^ime, and it might be better to 

 always use the hyphenated form, i. e., black- 

 bass. 



Trout is another of the English names 

 variously misapplied. In the old country 

 it is given to a single species generally dis- 

 tributed through the island in clear cold 

 streams. The Pilgrims foimd 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 



