EEPORT OF THE COMMISSIOISrER OF FISHERIES. 167 



England were not veiy far astra}" in many of the names they gave; 

 but as the}' or their successors wandered further and farther from 

 their old home, they made many mistakes. A few examples out of 

 the ver}' man}- will illustrate. 



Among the most common of the English fishes are the cod, perch, 

 bass, and trout. The immigrants to Massachusetts applied these names 

 to fishes of the same genera as the originals, or of very closely related 

 genera, but mostly of diflerent species. As population extended into 

 remoter regions and stranger faunas, the meager suppl}^ of names had 

 to be doled out to forms quite unlike those to which they had been 

 originally applied. 



Cod was at first scarcely at all misapplied, the species being so well 

 known to all, but in a few cases the name was given to the only fresh- 

 water species of the same famil}' — Lota maculosa, otherwise called 

 burbot; when the Americans reached the Pacific coast, however, not 

 finding the true cod, thej' misapplied its name to fishes of very difler- 

 ent families, although generally with qualifying prefixes. Thus, the 

 young of the boccaccio (a scorp£enoid fish, Sehastodes 2ya>(cisj)u)h), 

 which were caught at the wharves of San Francisco, were dubbed tom- 

 cods; a hexagrammoid fish {Hexagrammus decagrammus)^ also inaptly 

 named spotted rock trout, was by others called rock cod; another spe- 

 cies {Ophiodon elongatus) was designated as the cod or "codfish where 

 the true cod is unlaiown,'' and, where it is known, the cultus cod. 



Perch was subject to much greater misuse. In England the name is 

 specifically applied to a well-known fresh-water fish {Perca -fluvlatilis). 

 The immigrants to New England found a fish almost undistinguishable 

 from it, and properly gave it the same name. Others gave it to fishes 

 having no real resemblance; such is the one called also white perch 

 along the Atlantic coast, which is a bass {Morone ariieTicanct)\ others 

 are sciienids, as the silver perch {Bairdiella chrysura), the gray perch 

 {Pogonias chromis)^ and the white perch of the Ohio River {Aplodinotus 

 grunniens)\ another, the red perch {Selastes marinus), is a scorptenid; 

 and still another, the blue perch {Tautogolahrus hurgall), a wrasse or 

 labrid. The name is also given in some places to various species of a 

 family peculiar to America, the centrarchids, and among them to the 

 black-basses and the sun-fishes. Along the Pacific coast it is given to 

 viviparous fishes or embiotocids; especially, in California, to the 

 alfione {RJiacJwchilus toxot&s), and in Oregon and Washington to 

 another, likewise miscalled porgee {Damalichthys argyrosoimi.'^). The 

 Sacramenta River embiotocid {Hystei^ocarpus traskii) is called river 

 perch, or simply perch. 



Bass is applied to so man}' different species — a score or more— that 

 we can not spare the room to enumerate them. In England it is the 

 proper name of a marine fish common only along the southern coast, 

 formerly called Lahrax liijpus^ but now named Dlcenirarchus lahxm. 



