TAUTOGA. 255 



coast of Massachusetts, though when brought 

 from New Jersey, and thrown into the mud of the 

 bays, they increase in size remarkably fast. In 

 some rivers, a few miles from the ocean, the Med- 

 ford, for example, in the neighborhood of Boston, 

 oysters once abounded in considerable plenty, but 

 circumstances have finally conspired to reduce 

 them so much, that they are at present hardly con- 

 sidered to exist there at all. The tautog is one of 

 the fish constituted for that mixture of salt and fresh 

 water, and hence it will never flourish, where there 

 are so few rivers as in the neighborhood of Bos- 

 ton. 



Tautogs are highly prized, but the Boston mar- 

 ket, allowed to be the first in New England, is but 

 poorly supplied with them ; whenever they are for 

 sale, it seems to be the result of accident, as no 

 particular effort is made to search for them exclu- 

 sively. 



Before us lies a specimen, weighing seven 

 pounds, washed on shore after a severe storm. 

 Tautog, is a Mohegan Indian word, meaning black, 

 and it is familiarly called black-fish, and black- 

 bass. Several species are known in the southern 

 market, viz: L. T. fusca, L. T. rubens, and L. 

 T. alia. 



To a lover of good fish, the exhibition of the 

 tautog, as we have observed them in the New 



