53 PHILOLOGY OF THE OITANANICHE 



appeared to them a deformed or different kind of 

 pike from that to which they had been accustomed. 

 The river of the same name that flows into Lake St. 

 Peter, which name has been extended to the town 

 built at its mouth, and the county of which it is the 

 chef lieu, was doubtless so called from the number of 

 these fish taken in or near its estuarj^, and after their 

 Indian name. And it is a singular corroboration of 

 the absolute correctness of the French orthography 

 "maskinong^" that no less an authority than Dr. 

 James A. Henshall, the author of the paper on this 

 fish in American Oame. Fishes, following the nomen- 

 clature of Dr. Mitchil, and of De Kay, in his Fishes 

 of JVeio York, substitutes for nohilior, as the name of 

 this particular species, " masquinongy," which is about 

 as near as it is possible for English orthography to go 

 in representing the correct pronunciation of " maski- 

 nonge." Yet Dr. Henshall claims that by common 

 consent and custom the name is " mascalonge " among 

 the majority of anglers, and that " mascalonge " it will 

 be for generations to come. Nor does this mongrel 

 name, which Dr. Henshall himself employs for the 

 title of his admirable monograph on the fish, repre- 

 sent the full extent of the departure from the origi- 

 nal name. He gives us himself, among other forms, 

 "muscalonge," "muskellunge," " muskallonge," etc., 

 and a variety of other spellings has been adopted by 

 other writers. "Muskellunge" — one of the forms 

 already quoted — is the name employed to designate 

 the species by Dr. C. Brown Goode in his American 

 Fishes, and is as far removed from the original name 

 as " winninish " is from " ouananiche." 



