1()6 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



bead " of Williams and of Josselyn, (in jS"ew England Earities, p. GO, of 

 Tiickerman's edition,) and the latter, if known at all to the Narra- 

 gansett Indians in Williams's time, was not common enough to bring its 

 Indian name to his notice. In a manuscript vocabulary obtained by 

 President iStiles in 1762, ^'from a Pequot Indian at Groton, Oounec^ 

 ticut," I find " Tautauge, Blackfish," which removes all doubt as to the 

 appropriation of the name. In the same vocabulary, or list of names 

 rather, are these: " Z7mj?saw^es, Alewives," [=aumsuog, 'R. W.^] '^ Ca- 

 chauxet, Gunners," [our ^'Ohogset,''] " Aqiiaunduut, Blue Fish." 



Tliis last I have not found elsewhere. Its occurrence here shows 

 that the Temnodon saltator was no stranger in Fisher's Island Sound 

 in 1762. 



While at Edgartown last summer, I heard old fishermen call floun- 

 ders and plaice "buts," distinguishing the species by a prefix. I did not 

 before know that this old English and Dutch name had survived, in 

 X)opular use, to our time. Palsgrave translates the French '' plye" 

 [plie] by " Butte fysshe," and Steendam, the Dutch poet, names the 

 ''i5o/, en Sneck" — plaice and pike — among tlie fishes of 'Sew Netherlands 

 in 1661. The Halibut is the "holy-but," (Grerman, heilige-bntt,) and we 

 have the same ground-word in " Thorn-butt," and "Turbot," though 

 the lexicographers stick to the old etymology from Latin, turbo^ a top ; 

 and in the English '^ Burt " or '-Birt'." 



I forget whether or not I made a note for you on the alleged deriva- 

 tion of ^'alewife," from "«i^oo/." Dr. J. V. 0. Smith, in his Natural 

 History of the Fishes of Massachusetts, 1833, was perhaps the first to 

 record the suggestion that ^'-alewife is derived from the Indian w^ord 

 aloof ^ signifying a hony fisliJ^ Dr. Bartlett's Dictionary of American- 

 isms, Webster's, and, I believe, Worcester's, Dictionaries accept this 

 etymology, and Professor Scheie De Yere, in his recently published vol- 

 ume of " Americanisms," is misled into recognizing in '' alewife" a "most 

 ludicrous corruption of the Narragansett term aloof j'"^ though he appears 

 to have been struck by the objection that neither I nor /can have a 

 place in a Narragansett word, and he suggests that the original name 

 may have been ainoop. 



The Narragansett and Massachusetts name of the alewife and herring 

 (common to several species) was Aumsu-og^ (pl^i'-O ^s noted by Eoger 

 Williams and, with slight dialectic variation, by President Stiles, as you 

 have seen. The only authority for " aloof" is a letter of (the se,cond 

 John Winthrop, printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1678, (No.) 

 142,) in which he mentions the use of " the fishes called aloofes''' for 

 manuring corn-fields. If we could refer to Winthrop's manuscript, I 

 am confident we should find that a copyist or printer had substituted 

 "aloofes" for '-'- aloofes ^^ i. e., aloses or alizes. The modern English 

 "allis" was in old French and old English "alouze" or " aloose,' 

 nearer than the modern form of the name to Latin alausa. Morton's 

 New Enghmd Canaan, (1637) mentions the use of the " fish by some 

 called shadds, by some allizes,''^ as fertilizers. 



Forty yeais before Winthrop's letter was written from Connecticut, 

 Wood, in New England's Prospect, (London, 1634,) catalogues "big- 

 bellied Alewives," with "consorting Herrings and the bony Shad," 

 among the fishes of Massachusetts; and .losselyn (New Enghind Pari- 

 ties, p. 23) names the " Alize Aleivlfe, because greaf-bclUed,'^^ with the 

 synonymes "Obille, Oldwife, Allow." In his "Voyages" (1674) he 

 describes this fisli as "like a Herring, but has a. bigger bellie, therefore 

 called an Alewite." 



Couch, I see, gives '^ Aleirife^^ and '-^ MakV^ as popular names of the 



