SwANTON] INDIANS OP THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 267 



These two latter species resemble the shad in appearance, although they usually 

 do not grow over a foot in length. There are several other clupeoid fishes in the 

 waters of Florida, which have some resemblance to the shad, although they 

 are of small size. It is impossible to identify the pea?e pereo with any exactness. 

 The names peixe prego and peixe porco are applied to species of sharks in Portugal. 

 Judging from the author's comparison of the fish to a hog, a fish having a deep body 

 is suggested. The following three species, which are found in these waters, are 

 quite common and have rather deep bodies, namely, fresh-water drum or gaspergou, 

 Hdplodinotus grunniens, the black drum, Pogonias chromis, and the jewfish, Prom- 

 icrops itaiara. The first named is a strictly fresh-water fish, but is also common 

 in brackish water ; while the third is a salt-water species. ( Robertson, 1933, vol. 

 2, pp. 372-374.) 



When Buckingham Smith asked the opinion of Dr. Theodore Gill 

 of the Smithsonian Institution regarding the identity of the fish 

 described by Elvas, he got the following reply, as printed in Smith's 

 Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto: 



I have carefully perused the account, and although there is little on which to 

 base the identification of the species, I am disposed to believe that the following 

 conjectures will at least closely approximate the truth. The historian enu- 

 merates five species of which three have scales while the others are naked. Thie 

 scaleless species are the "bagre" and the "peel-fish." 



The "bagre" is undoubtedly the large "cat-fish" of the West, known as 

 Ictalurus caerulescens, that being the only species that attains a weight of "one 

 hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds." The head is large, as in all its con- 

 geners, but not as big as would be inferred from the text ; the "great spines like 

 very sharp awls," along the side, are the spines of the pectural fins. The 

 species is very generally distributed in the hydrographical basin of the Missis- 

 sippi. The "peel-fish," with "the snout a cubit in length, the upper lip being 

 shaped like a shovel," is very clearly the singular fish universally known 

 throughout the West as the "spoonbill-cat" or sturgeon, and "paddle-fish." It 

 is related to the ordinary sturgeons, but is distinguished by the peculiar leaf- 

 like expansion of the snout, the extension of the gill covers, and the presence 

 of minute teeth on the jaws in the young. The species observed was the 

 Polyodon spatula, occurring in the Mississippi River, and all its larger tribu- 

 taries. The only other species of the genus, besides the American, inhabit 

 the rivers of China and Japan. 



The scaly fishes are not so easily determinable. The one shaped like a 

 barbel was probably the Cycleptus elongatus, a member of the family of 

 "suckers," or Catastomidae. That species would probably be recognized by 

 most or all casual observers as having a greater superficial resemblance to the 

 barbel of Europe than any other of our fishes. The fish "like a shad" was 

 perhaps the species which has been introduced into the ichthyological system 

 as Pomolobm chrysochloris, and which is very closely related to the "fall 

 herring" or "shad" of the Eastern fishermen. The breamlike fish cannot be 

 identified with any approach to certainty; but it is possible that it may have 

 been the fish now known in Louisiana and Mississippi as "tarpon" or "big 

 scale," and called by naturalists Megalops cyprinoides. That species more 

 nearly fulfils the requisites as to form of head and excellence as food than 

 any of the species known to me. The "pereo" is probably referable to the 

 genus Haplodinotus, the species of which are generally called "white perch" 

 or "drum" by the inhabitants of the west. That type, at least, is the only 



