The Hogfish 127 
The deep-water forms, from forty or fifty feet, 
are the most beautiful; those which have been in 
shallows for some time are less pronounced. So 
marked is this variation of color and difference 
between the sexes, and old and young, that the 
unfortunate hogfish has, like others, been named 
so many times that with the channel-bass it might 
take the prize as a terrible example of the insati- 
ate pursuit of names and new species. Leopold 
von Buch, the well-known geologist of Berlin, 
and friend of the lamented Agassiz, once said, 
“When I am at Neuchatel and I knock at the 
door of Agassiz I am always afraid.” “Why?” 
asked a listener. ‘I dread,” said Von Buch, “lest 
he take me for a new species.” It is only just to 
say that Agassiz never experimented with the 
nomenclature of the hogfish, Among other 
names it is el capitan, and in Jamaica and Porto 
Rico, perro perro; but among the Conchs on the 
reef, and the Bahamians, I never heard these 
names: it was always the hogfish. One of the 
finest table fishes in America, game in every 
sense, yet fate ordains it to be “ yanked” in, by 
the smack fishermen, with grouper lines. 
The hogfish, of which there is but one species, 
belongs to the family Ladvide (the Wrasse- 
