GADEANS AND PLErEONECTS. 333 



cannot consent to pass over some of the more inieresting 

 species wholly sub silentio ; and as in speaking of the 

 clupean race we felt ourself imperatively called upon not 

 to give herrings the go-by, albeit unknown both to Greek 

 agora and Latin forum; so here, prefatory to a notice 

 of the classic gadus merlucius, or hake, we shall pause to 

 make some observations on the pot-bellied gastrocharyb- 

 dic cod, and on one or two other favourite species of the 

 race, to which, salted or fresh, mankind is almost as 

 much indebted as to the cod itself. 



Some of the gadean etymologies are so strange, that 

 we cannot forbear giving the reader a sample of them. 

 FoSo? (Grr.) and gadus (Latin) are said to come from 

 the Syrian wovi gad ^^sh ; and there is in corroboration 

 of this etymology an apocryphal Syrian Queen Atergadis, 

 mentioned in Athenseus, and whose name imports Venus- 

 fish. The word, which was thus general at first, and in- 

 cluded all fish, was next restricted by the Greeks and 

 Romans to a particular species of the present group, and 

 then again, by a third caprice of nomenclature, made to 

 stand for a whole genus in modern ichthyology. With 

 regard to our trivial name for the caput of this tribe, 

 ' the word cod,' says Cuvier, (what ears some naturalists 

 must have !) 'is derived from gadus, which it resembles 

 in sound.' Cod meant originally a purse, or -n-ijpa, and 

 the fish was so called, says an ingenious finder of strange 

 similitudes, 'ab aliqua marsupii similitudine.' Aliqua, in- 

 deed ! Morue, its French equivalent, comes, says Belon, 

 from the English merwel, a word which, like Cuvier, we 

 are unable to find in any English author of our acquaint- 

 ance. According to Aldrovandi, the word morrue is a 

 Marseillais patois for a person with thick blubber-lips, 

 and is thence applied by metonymy to a fish like the cod, 

 whose labial appendages are in character with one of this 

 description. Being unacquainted with Marseillais patois, 

 and warned by Belon's mistakes of the perils of dabbhno- 



