166 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OE FISH AND FISHERIES. 



head " of Williams and of Josselyn, (in New England Rarities, p. 09, of 

 Tuckerrnan's edition,) and the latter, if known at all to the Narra- 

 gausett Indians in Williams's time, was not- common enough to bring its 

 Indian name to his notice. In a manuscript vocabulary obtained by 

 President Stiles in 1762, ''from a Pequot Indian at Groton, Connec- 

 ticut," I find " Tautauge, Blackfish," which removes all doubt as to the 

 appropriation of the name. In the same vocabulary, or list of names 

 rather, are these: " Umpsauges, Alewives," [=aumsuog, R. W.,] " Ca- 

 chauxet, Gunners," [our "Ohogset,"] " Aquaunduut, Blue Fish." 



This last I have not found elsewhere. Its occurrence here shows 

 that the Temnodon saltator was no stranger in Fisher's Island Sound 

 in 1762. 



While at Edgartown last summer, I heard old fishermen call floun- 

 ders aud plaice "buts," distinguishing the species by a prefix. I did not 

 before know that this old English and Dutch name had survived, in 

 popular use, to our time. Palsgrave translates the French " plye" 

 [plie] by " Butte fysshe," and Steendam, the Dutch poet, names the. 

 u Bot, en Sneck" — plaice and pike — among the fishes of New Netherlands 

 in 1661. The Halibut is the "holy-but," (G-erman, heilige-butt,) and we 

 have the same ground-word in " Thorn-butt," and "Turbot," though 

 the lexicographers stick to the old etymology from Latin, turbo, a top 5 

 and in the English "Burt" or "Birtl" 



I forget whether or not I made a note for you on the alleged deriva- 

 tion of "alewife/ 7 from "aloof." Dr. J. V. 0. Smith, in his Natural 

 History of the Fishes of Massachusetts, 1833, was perhaps the first to 

 record the suggestion that " alewife is derived from the Indian word 

 aloof, signifying a bony fish." Dr. Bartlett's Dictionary of American- 

 isms, Webster's, and, I believe, Worcester's, Dictionaries accept this 

 etymology, and Professor Scheie De Vere, in his recently published vol- 

 ume of " Americanisms," is misled into recognizing in " alewife" a "most 

 ludicrous corruption of the Narragansett term aloof,''' though he appears 

 to have been struck by the objection that neither I nor /can have a 

 place in a Narragansett word, and he suggests that the original name 

 may have been ainoop. 



The Narragansett and Massachusetts name of the alewife and herring 

 (common to several species) was Aumsu-og, (plur.,) as noted by Roger 

 Williams and, with slight dialectic variation, by President Stiles, as you 

 have seen. The only authority for " aloof" is a letter of (the se,cond 

 John Winthrop, printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1678, (No.) 

 142,) in which he mentions the use of " the fishes called aloof es" for 

 Manuring corn-fields. If we could refer to Winthrop's manuscript, I 

 am confident we should find that a copyist or printer had substituted 

 "aloofes" for " aloofes," i. e., aloses or alizes. The modern English 

 "allis" was in old French aud old English "alouze" or " aloose,' 

 nearer than the modern form of the name to Latin alausa. Morton's 

 New England Canaan, (1637) mentions the use of the "fish by some 

 called shadds, by some allizes," as fertilizers. 



Forty years before Winthrop's letter was written from Connecticut, 

 Wood, in New England's Prospect, (London, 1634,) 'catalogues "big- 

 bellied Alewives," with "consorting Herrings and the bony Shad," 

 among the fishes of Massachusetts; and Josselyn (New England Rari- 

 ties, p. 23) names the "Alize Alewife, because' great-bellied," with the 

 synonymes " Olafle, Oldwife, Allow." In his "Voyages" (1674) he 

 describes this fish as "like a Herring, but has a bigger bellie, therefore 

 called an Alewife." 



Couch, I see, gives " Alewife " and " Maid " as popular names of the 



