xxxvili AMERICAN FISHES. 
word, in certain localities, for centuries, although it was doubtless derived 
from the French through the Normans. In the same year, 1620, that the 
“ Pilgrim Fathers ” left Old England and reached New England, one Venner 
published the statement that “The 4//owes is taken in the same places that 
Sammon is.” TZhird, Aloofe is simply the result of a printer’s mistaking an 
old-fashioned median s for anf The second John Winthrop sent to the 
Royal Society an article on “ Maiz”’ which was published in 1679 * in the 
‘Philosophical Transactions” (XII., p. 1066). In that article he noted 
the coincidence of the planting of corn by the Indians and the “coming up 
of a fish, called A/oofe, into the Rivers.” Of course that fish could only have 
been the one called by his contemporaries, Morton, Wood, and Josselyn, 
Allize and Alewife. Fourth, Alewife is doubtless a mere variant—an 
accommodative form, perhaps—of the word variously spelled in olden days 
Alose, Aloose (the oo has the value of a prolonged o sound), 4Howes, Allow, 
Alice, Olafie, and Oldwife. Fifth, the Narragansett Indian name of the 
Alewife was (in the plural) Aumsuog, according to Roger Williams, or 
Umpsauges, according to Stiles. Sxth, the current English name of one of 
the Shads is Ad/ice or Allis Shad. 
Let it not be inferred from this that disrespect is held towards the great 
New English Dictionary. Even the very best are liable to err, and the 
Dictionary is not exempt from the liability. 
An equally exaggerated venture in “fake etymology ” has been committed 
in the case of another renowned fish—the Mascalonge. An early author to 
give expression to the concept was Henry William Herbert. In 1849, in 
“ Frank Forrester’s Fish and Fishing in the United States,” a very popular 
work in its day, it was recorded (p. 152) that the Mascalonge “owes its 
name to the formation of the head—masgue allongé, long face or snout, 
Canadian French—but which has been translated from dialect to dialect, 
maskinonge, muscalunge and muscalinga, until every trace of the true 
derivation has been lost.” Now, it so happens that one of the earliest 
French historians of Canada, Father Charlevoix, distinguished the fish in 
question just because it had a shorter face or snout than the common Pike, 
with which he was familiar, and he called what is now known as the 
‘“\ Mascalonge ” or “Maskalonge” (the latter is the accepted form for the 
“Century” and “ Standard ”) the “ Masquenonge,” having recognized 
*The article in question is entitled ‘‘The Defcription, Culture, and Ufe of Maiz — Communicated by Mr. 
Winthrop” and is undated. It was evidently sent by John Winthrop the younger, but must have been written 
long before its publication, as Winthrop died in 1676. The volume is for 1678 (but published 1679) and entitled 
“XII,” but the pagination is continuous from the ninth (‘‘IX.”) and the titlepage may not be readily found ; 
it comes before page 815 or “* Num, 133.” 
