FOREST AND STREAM, 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



Devoted to Field and Aquatic Sports, Practical Natural History, 

 Fish Culture, the Protection of Game, Preservation of Forests, 

 and toe Inculcation in Men and Women of a Healthy Interest 

 in Out-Door Recreation and Study : 



PUBLISHED BY 



forest mtd J£te»f §ubUshina Qomgsiqi* 



—AT— 



NO. Ill (old NO. 103) FULTON STREET, NEW YORK. 

 [Post Office Box 28S2J 



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V Any publisher Inserting our prospectus as above one time, with 

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NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1878. 



To Correspondents. 



All communications whatever, intended for publication, must be ac- 

 companied with real name of the writer as a guaranty of good faith, 

 and be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Company. 

 Names will not be published if objection be made. No anonymous con 

 tributions will be regarded. 



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Secretaries of Clubs and Associations are urged to favor us with brief 

 notes of their movements and transactions. 



Nothing will be admitted to any department of the paper that may 

 not be read with propriety in the home circle. 



We cannot be responsible for dereliction of the mail service if money 

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 undersigned. We have no Philadelphia agent. 



VB~ Trade supplied by American News Company. 

 CHARLES HAIXOCK., Editor. 



T. 0. BANKS, S. H. TURRILL, Chicago, 



Business Manager. Western Manager. 



Ode Obligations to the New York Herald. — Our thanks 

 are due to the greatest of American papers for the announce- 

 ment given in their columns of The Forest and Steeam and 

 Rod and Gtjn gold medal for team shooting. 



. — •♦, — . 



Field and Rivee. — We specially commend the Field and 

 River, a neat monthly journal, published at New Brighton, 

 Pa., to our readers. Devoted to the woodland, farm and gar- 

 den, and field sports, the general information it imparts is 

 excellent in character. The Field and River is neatly printed, 



and is attractive every way. 



> .#■ i 



Mr. Mather's Retuen. — We are pleased to announce the 

 return of Mr. Fred Mather, after an absence of three months, 

 when he visited the principal fish culturists' establishments 

 of England, France and Germany, as well as the most im- 

 portant aquaria. He has returned loaded down with notes 

 (not hank notes) on the fish markets and fisheries of the Old 

 World. We trust soon to be enabled to lay before our read- 

 ers the results of Mr. Mather's experiences. 



The "Ameeioan Agriculturist." — Some years ago the 

 American Agriculturist gave to each of its subscribers a sam- 

 ple of sorghum seed, and the result was that the face of the 

 country was Boon covered with fields of sorghum. Now it 

 Qonates a $1.50 microscope of thirty-six magnifying power to 

 each subscriber, and we've no doubt that all the minute things 

 in earth, air, and water will now be investigated. We believe 

 the Agriculturist has something like 120,000 subscribers ; we 

 therefore leave it to our readers to imagine what an impulse 

 mil now be given to science. More than this, what a stir 

 will be excited among the squeamish, whose curiosity will 

 prompt them to examine into everything they eat, or drink, 

 or U8fi. We anticipate a panic among the grocers. We have 

 used microscopes all our lives and never saw one nearly equal 

 to this -at double the price. So the person who subscribes to 

 tne Agri-ulturitt for $3 will get much more than t the worth 

 of his money. 



SCIENTIFIC NOMENCLATURE. 



THERE is among outsiders, and among many who want 

 to be regarded on the inside in matters of natural his- 

 tory, a great miscomprehension with reference to scientific 

 nomenclature. It is made evident in the apparent idea that 

 it is an affectation to use the terms, and also in the habit of 

 deploring the continued changing of scientific names. The 

 self-exalted specialist is careless and derisive of the ignorance 

 of the public in the matter, and will not condescend to ex- 

 plain : 



" They could not understand— oh, never! 



'Tis something eminently Greek ; 



'Tis something intricately clever." 



Did not Agassiz, in the estimation of many readers infalli- 

 ble, call the big-mouthed black bass Grystes nigricans ; 

 thereafter, Gill, the accurate, establishes his name as Microp- 

 terus nigricans (Cuv.) Gill; and, later, Mr. Goodebowsto the 

 Professor's suggestion, and would have us drop this name far 

 down the page, among the synonyms, and place at the head 

 Micropterus Flc-ridanus (Les.) Goode. Then, Professor 

 Cope offers the opinion that Lacepede's reference to Microp- 

 terus is most absurd, and suggests that Rafinesque's Galliums 

 — which interpreted is beautiful tail — be adopted. Now 

 comes Jordan, ferreter of old lore, and points out to the Pro- 

 fessor that that erratic enthusiast of the early part of the cen- 

 tury, Rafinesque, had described the bass as Lepomis pallida, 

 the Professor yields and Floridanus is demolished — Lepomis 

 has already been squelched— and Micropterus pallidus (Raf.), 

 Gill and Jordan, is the next ten-pin which invites the bowler's 

 aim. If we refer to a paper by Theodore Gill, "On the 

 Species of the Genus Micropterus (Lac.) or Grystes (Auct.)" 

 we find seven stately classic binomials, used in all some 

 eighteen times by twelve authoritative waiters since 1828, and 

 all knocked into a cocked hat in 1873. 



All this time — he began early — Scth Green goes on calling 

 him " Oswego Bass," with high contempt for "the literary 

 fellers " and their mouth- wrenching names. He knows what 

 he means ; can tell him at sight anywhere, and can even 

 stand on his feet before the audience of "fish-sharps" at the 

 February meeting, and stand the cross-fire of questions from 

 the famous ichthyologist, and hold his own without confu- 

 sion ; doubtful, in fact, but that "he held the fort " after the 

 battle ended. The point in dispute was: Whether both 

 species, black bass and Oswego bass, fide Green, and Microp- 

 terus salmoides, and Micropterus nigricans, fide Gill, were 

 both found, as asserted by Seth, north of the great lakes in 

 the Dominion of Canada. The fun for the audience was 

 something like that afforded in reading Mark Twain's recital 

 of the colloquy between Scotty Briggs and the minister when 

 he went to ask him to preach Buck Fanshaw's funeral sermon. 



Why is not good English sufficient, and what is the use of 

 scientific names ? BtrongylocentrotusdrobracMensis ; speak it 

 resonantly and see if your mouth doesn't feel as if a cross-cut 

 saw had been drawn through it ; and yet these names have 

 been coined by hundreds ; so that, a certain scientist claims, 

 that, besides the ordinary vocabulary of a few thousand words 

 which an educated speaker of English uses, he has an ad- 

 ditional lot of twenty-thousand scientific terms. You might 

 naturally expect him to have the bronchitis. 



Professor Baird, in his reports, has shown us something of 

 the confusion prevailing in common names as they are ap- 

 plied along the coast. Now take the word salmon. The defi- 

 nition given by Webster is " A fish of a yellowish red color, 

 of the genus Salmo ; it is found in all the northern climates 

 of America, Europe and Asia." Then a fair wood-cut, with 

 the word "Salmon" beneath, and a few lines describing 

 habits, weight and food qualities. A meager enough defini- 

 tion, and, at least, partially untrue. The appended note 

 indicates to those who know the species, that it is intended to 

 apply only to the salmon of the rivers of Scandinavia, Great 

 Britain, the Rhine and the rivers of the east coast of America 

 east of the Housa tonic. This is the fish entitled to the name, 

 by priority and long possession. But go to the rivers of the 

 Pacific coast, to the streams emptying both sides of Bering 

 Sea, to Kamtchatka, Siberia and the north coast of Europe. If 

 you do your duty-by the rest of us you will correspond for 

 Forest and Steeam and tell us all about the fish you see and 

 angle for. Suppose you should be limited to the word sal- 

 mon for such of the genus as should not come under the 

 nearly-equally diversely applied terms of trout and salmon- 

 trout, and imagine the impatience and disgust of the men of 

 the rod, to say nothing of the lofty contempt of naturalists 

 and amateurs at your motley assemblage of little and big fish, 

 of rank and oily with toothsome kind, and of many which the 

 art of Conroy and McBride couldn't tempt to " rise to the 

 fly." 



But, worse still, you shall go to the Ohio River and its 

 tributaries and buy salmon, and you will be furnished with 

 wall-eyed pike, glass-eyed pike, yellow pike-perch, dore, 

 pickerel, pike and jack j thus I am enabled, by the use of 

 these names, to make clear to the dwellers in different parts 

 of the country the one species meant. But, says the Lake 

 Erie man, the trouble is they call the fish by its wrong 

 name ; let them learn to call it (?) "pickerel." 



Now, you may go to the Carolina coast, and they will sell 

 you all the trout you wish, and deliver to you squeteague, 

 chick-wick, weak-fish, blue-fish, salt-water trout or summer 

 trout. With this list of names I am enabled to make evident 

 to the residents of New England, New York, New Jersey and 

 of the coast southward the single species of fish I refer to, 

 which the South Carolina fisherman, in good faith, has sold 



you as trout. Why don't they learn to call it properly the 

 weak-fish, says the New Yorker. 



Did you ever see the indignation, too deep for words, when 

 you tell the aged, local authority oh piscatorial questions, 

 " That isn't a herring, it's an alewife ; herrings never come 

 into fresh-water." Yon are apt to appreciate the isolation of 

 Crusoe's desert isle, as the old gentleman walks silently off 

 and leaves you alone on the shore. Now you might have 

 told him it was a Pomolobus pseudoliarengus and he'd willingly 

 wait to see what kind of a foreigner you were: but, to 

 dispute this absolute fact, which every child and nigger has 

 known from the time of Gineral Washin'ton's fishery to the 

 present, and to tell him that it is an alewife, when he knows 

 that the moss-bunker, the pogy, the poghaden, the panhaden, 

 the hard-head, the skippaug, the bony-fish, the menhaden, the 

 bug-fish, the white-fish, the fat-back, the yellow-tail* — now 

 you will all know the fish I mean from Massachusetts to 

 Albemarle Sound— is the alewife, as well as he knows that his 

 wife's name is Hannah, is too preposterous, and, in fact, im- 

 pudent. So that if the scientific name had no other value, it 

 might be of some purpose as a sort of pacificatory compromise 

 between sectional prejudices for old names. But the natura- 

 list will explain to you that its precision, sic, as applied to the 

 one species of fish, is a matter of importance, and that the 

 naturalists of all nations know immediately what you refer to. 

 And then he would tell you. that the relation of this species to 

 the whole series of animal life was to be traced from the 

 name given to the genus, the family which comprised this 

 genus with other genera, and the order in which was grouped 

 this family with other families, and the class which embraced 

 this order with other orders, and so on to the animal king- 

 dom, which, with the vegetable kingdom, takes in all organic 

 life, and is, in this general group, to be distinguished from the 

 mineral kingdom. Then he might explain how to his 

 voluminously stored mind came up, at the inspiration of this 

 name, the points of structure, the embryological history, the 

 geographical distribution, etc., all of which, to the thorough 

 student, it might actually do. 



The point of objection is, however, to the continual chang- 

 ing of the names. Many popular writers, appreciating the 

 advantage of precision in the scientific name, at the cost of 

 considerable trouble and labor, get the accepted scientific 

 names fixed in their minds. To discover, a short time after- 

 ward, that some acknowledged authority has revised the 

 nomenclature, when they have just settled themselves con- 

 fidently in the assurance that thoy have mastered the matter, 

 and are prepared to edify their friends in print or speech, with 

 lumps from the dead languages, is exceedingly annoying. 



Now, this matter of change has occupied the minds of the 

 scientists for a great many years, and grave sessions of the 

 British Association of Science, and of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science, have sat in serious con- 

 clave over tha questions which it involved. Printed copies of 

 their decisions have been sent abroad, prescribing the restric- 

 tions under which the changes are to be made, meeting with 

 acquiescence from many, and exciting dissension among others. 



But there are many who want to know why there should be 

 any change at all. >:. To begin, where the Irish philosopher 

 said all beginnings should be made, at the beginning, there are 

 exact sciences, but zoology is not one. It is not as inexact as 

 metaphysics or theology; but its truths do not receive their 

 positive fixity in a few years or an age. It is rather a pro- 

 gressive science. Now, I am not going to analyze the methods 

 of Aristotle, Linmeus and Cuvier, and bring the stages of 

 progress up from the time Adam gave the animals common 

 names in his zoological garden. But it is clear to all that in 

 those branches of science relating to zoology we know more and 

 more from generation to generation. In anatomy, physiology 

 with regard to form in all its variation, to color in all its gra • 

 dation of tints, as to the extent to which any species exists 

 over the country or world, and also, the possession of 

 numerous specimens of each species and variety in our 

 museums, greater advantages are afforded to the student 

 almost in each successive year. The generalizer of one age 

 takes into consideration all the facts the fact-gatherers have 

 accumulated, and writes out his system and theory ; but these 

 fact-gatherers in science are the most industrious men alive. 

 There is not daylight enough in a day to satisfy them, 

 so they work on into the night. The facts accumulate 

 continually in the form of stuffed skins, of alcoholic speci- 

 mens, of skeletons and anatomical preparations, of recorded 

 notes on the embryological period of life found under the tube 

 of the microscope, of notes on the anatomy and physiology 

 of animals found in dissection and vivisection. So that soon 

 the work of the former generalizer upon a meagre collection 

 of facts is found faulty ; and now Owen and Muller come 

 forward and leave Cuvier's system a thing of the past, 

 which has served its day, while Huxley, later, declares his 

 discoveries, and Owen is honored only for what he has been, 

 while Darwin proffers his theory to stand the test of the ac- 

 cumulating evidence of to-day and the future. This ;in the 

 higher walks of scientific truth-seeking. But to get back to 

 the question of name changing. 



Peter Kalm, the traveler, and Gordon, the naturalist, collect- 

 ed in the United States and sent specimens to Linnaaus in the 

 middle of the eighteenth century. The species differed en- 

 tirely from the forms of the old world which Linnajus had 

 around him, and in his later editions, at least, he gave and 

 published names to the genus and to the species the binomial 

 term, which the naturalists agree shall be the only one recog- 



* Called also hyaoa ana gaspereau to Nova Scotia.— Ed, 



