TALES OF FISHES 



grave, the talented young German who described 

 the fish in the book referred to, and who afterward 

 sacrificed his life in exploring the unknown fields of 

 American zoology, is interesting, since it gives a 

 clue to the derivation of the name "boohoo," by 

 which this fish, and probably spear-fish, are known 

 to English-speaking sailors in the tropical Atlantic. 



Sailfish were observed in the East Indies by 

 Renard and Valentijn, explorers of that region from 

 1680 to 1720, and by other Eastern voyagers. No 

 species of the genus was, however, systematically 

 described until 1786, when a stuffed specimen from 

 the Indian Ocean, eight feet long, was taken to 

 London, where it still remains in the collections of 

 the British Museum. From this specimen M. 

 Broussonet prepared a description, giving it the 

 name Scomber gladius, rightly regarding it as a species 

 allied to the mackerel. 



From the time of Marcgrave until 1872 it does not 

 appear that any zoologist had any opportunity to 

 study a sailfish from America or even the Atlantic; 

 yet in Gunther's Catalogue, the name H. americanus 

 is discarded and the species of America is assumed 

 to be identical with that of the Indian Ocean. 



The materials in the National Museum consist 

 of a skeleton and a painted plaster cast of the 

 specimen taken near Newport, Rhode Island, in 

 August, 1872, and given to Professor Baird by Mr. 

 Samuel Powell, of Newport. No others were ob- 

 served in our waters until March, 1878, when, ac- 

 cording to Mr. Neyle Habersham, of Savannah, 

 Georgia, two were taken by a vessel between Savan- 

 nah and Indian River, Florida, and were brought to 



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