288 
AMERICAN FISHES. 
These fishes were held in the highest esteem m classical days, for num¬ 
erous species of the group frequent the waters of Italy and Greece. 
“ According to the Greeks,” writes Badham, “ to do justice to their 
flesh was not easy, to speak of their trail as it deserved was impossi¬ 
ble, and to throw away even its excrement was a sin. The frugal Numa 
would not allow these expensive ‘ brains of Jove ’ {Cerebrum Jovis Supremi 
was a poetic name for the Scarus) to be imported for public entertainments, 
intimating thereby that parsimony was agreeable to the gods.” 
Aristotle considered the Scarus to be the only fish which slept at night. 
“Scarus alone their folded eyelids close 
In grateful intervals of soft repose 
In some sequestered cell, removed from sight 
They doze away the dangers of the night.” 
This ancient and aristocratic family is rather tropical in its tastes, but we 
have two worthy though not very highly appreciated representatives on our 
Eastern Atlantic coast, and others in our Gulf and Pacific waters. 
One of the best known shore species on our Atlantic coast, is the 
Tautog or Black-fish, Tautoga onitis. This fish is now found in greater 
or less abundance about St. John, N. B., to Charleston, S. C. East of 
New York it is usually called Tautog, a name of Indian origin, which first 
occurs in Roger William’s “Key to American Language,” printed in 
1643, in which this fish is enumerated among the edible species of Southern 
New England. “Tautog” would consequently seem to be a word from 
the dialect of the Narragansett Indians. On the coast of New York it is 
called “Black-fish”; in New Jersey also “Black-fish” and “Smooth 
Black-fish,” “Tautog,” or “Chub”; on the eastern shore of Virginia 
“Moll,” or “ Will-George ”; at the mouth of the Chesapeake “Salt¬ 
water Chub,” and in North Carolina the “Oyster-fish.” Of all these 
names, Tautog is by far the most desirable for general use. There are 
several other species along our coast called Black-fish, especially the sea- 
bass, which is often associated with the Tautog. The names Oyster-fish 
and Chub are also pre-engaged by other species. 
Though the present geographical distribution of the Tautog is well 
understood, there is no reason to believe that its range has been very 
considerably extended in the present century by the agency of man. 
That the species was known in Rhode Island two hundred and thirty 
years ago is reasonably certain from the reference by Roger Williams, 
