Saint John's River, Florida ..... Menhaden; Mossbunker; Fat-back. Discrepancies in the popular names. 18. These names are not separated in their distribution by sharply. defined boundaries. Still, as a glance at the table will show, the habitat, if that term may be legitimately used, of each local appellation appears to be clearly marked. Where there is a discrepancy it can usually be explained. For instance, the general use of the name "menhaden" in the vicinity of Boothbay, Me., is due to the presence of a large number of fishermen and laborers from Rhode Island who carry on the oil-factories in that region. In the same way the name "bony-fish" has been naturalized at Montauk Point and Napeague, N. Y. The factories in that neighborhood are owned by firms in Eastern Connecticut, and the Connecticut "bony-fish fleet" has a favorite cruising ground in the waters of Eastern Long Island. The names "menhaden” and “ mossbunker" have been introduced into Florida by northern fishermen, who prosecute the winter shad fisheries on the Saint John's, and these same names are more or less familiar all along the coast wherever the northern coasters and fishing vessels are known. The name preferable for adoption. 19. The adoption of some one suitable name for popular use is eminently desirable. "Menhaden" is the name most generally known, as well as the most distinctive. It has the additional recommendation of having been derived from an aboriginal language. It has been used in the titles of the two manufacturers' associations, and it is hoped that this usage will soon be conformed to by all. Trade-names. 20. Among the manufacturers in Port Monmouth, N. J., who prepare the menhaden as an article of food, a number of trade-names are in use, such as "American sardine" (in distinction from the European fish, which is prepared in a similar manner), "shadine," and "ocean trout.” * Etymologies. 21. A few words concerning the origin of the above-mentioned names may not be out of place. "Pogy" and "menhaden" are derived somewhat remotely from the Indian dialects of New England, the latter apparently from that in use in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the former from a more northern source. The writer is indebted to Prof. J. Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, Conn., for the following very sugges tive letter: * This fanciful name has been the occasion of many erroneous statements. In the New York Times for April 12, 1874, appeared an article entitled "American Sardines," which contained the following bit of biography: "The fish selected as the substitute for the sardine of Europe is the menhaden, more commonly known as the moss-bunker, and the scientific name of which is Trutta Oceana, or ocean-trout. Its color is silver, spotted with dark brown, and in the night-time assumes a reddish or fiery tinge. They abound in the seas east of the Canadas and in the bays and deep rivers which indent the New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia coasts, and from which they migrate in the spring of the year to the southward, and appear in great shoals along the coast of Long Island and in the Raritan and Lower New York bays. A mile or two to the northward of Sandy Hook is their favorite feeding-ground for the spring and summer, and thither they rendezvous toward the close of April in vast schools, numbering millions. They invariably come on with the warm weather, and remain until fall. Their breeding time is late in the winter," &c. These ridiculous statements, evidently compiled in part from printed accounts of the sea-trout (Salmo immaculatus, Storer) of the North, partly from the statements of the menhaden fishermen, but principally from the imagination of the writer, would perhaps not be worthy of notice had they not been copied by the European newspapers. A translation, with emendations which make it still more absurd, appeared in Das Ausland for August 17, 1874. The Stuttgart paper emends its name to Trutta trutta, and states that it resembles in color the brook-trout to which it is very closely allied. "Mr. G. BROWN GOODE: "HARTFORD, CONN., Dec. 19, 1874. "MY DEAR SIR: In reply to yours of the 14th respecting the local names of the Brevoortia menhaden, about all I can give you is in my note to the new edition of Roger Williams' Key, ch. xix. Williams names, together, among spring fish, "Aumsûog and Munnawhatteaug." Under the former name are included several species of the herring tribe, aum'su (plural, aums'uog) meaning 'small fish.' Munnawhatteaug, corrupted to Menhaden, means, literally fertilizer' ('that which manures.') This name was applied to the herring and alewife as well as the 'menhaden' proper,-all these species being used by the Indians for manuring their cornfields. "In the northern and eastern parts of New England the Brevoortia is commonly called Pauhagen, and probably in some localities 'poghaden' (as you write it and which is nearer the Indian original) though I have not heard it so pronounced by eastern fishermen. This name in the eastern dialects has precisely the same meaning as 'menhaden' (or rather munnawhatteaûg in Southern New England). The Abnaki (i. e., coast of Maine) name was Pookagan as Rasles wrote it, and the verb from which it is derived he translated by 'on engraisse la terre.' เ "Mossbunker is classic. Dr. Bartlett in his Dictionary of Americanisms quotes from Dow, jr.'s Sermons a remark that under the surface [of some smooth faced people] there may be found as many asperities as there are bones in a mossbunker? "Jacob Steendam mentions it in his poem 'in the Praise of New Netherland,' printed in 1661. Dankers and Sluyter, the Journal of whose Voyage to New York, 1679, was translated by Mr. Murphy for the L. I. Historical Society's Collection, vol. i. (p. 100), saw in the bay schools of innumerable fish, and a sort like herring called there 'Marsbanckers? "I have never looked for the origin of this name, but have had the impression that it was Dutch, perhaps transferred from some European species. I can make nothing of it as Indian. "Yours truly, "J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL." 22. According to Mr. J. V. C. Smith,* the older fishermen of Northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine called the fish by the Indian name "Pauhagen," and I myself have heard it called "poghaden" by old fishermen about Cape Cod. The modern name may easily have been derived from this by dropping the final syllable. At the present day this name is almost universally in use among the fishermen north of Cape Cod, though it is occasionally varied by "poggie" and "porgy." The use of the latter name should be carefully avoided: the same name, a corruption of the Indian "scuppaug," being commonly applied to Natural History of the Fishes of Massachusetts, embracing a practical essay on angling. By Jerome V. C. Smith, M. D., Boston. Allen and Ticknor, 1833. another fish, the "scuppaug" or "scup" (Stenotomus argyrops.)* As may be supposed, the name of Narragansett origin is most exclusively used in Southern Massachusetts and on the shores of Narragansett Bay, the former home of that tribe of Indians. In its present form it first appeared in print in 1792, in the New York Agricultural Transactions, in an article by the Hon. Ezra L'Hommedieu.t 23. "Hard-head" and "bony-fish" explain themselves, both referring to the same peculiarity of structure. The former name was first used about 1813 by Belknap in his History of New Hampshire; the latter, as well as "white-fish," by President Dwight in his Travels in New England. 24. The application of "white-fish" is also sufficiently evident, although this name is not a distinctive one, being applied to a large group of North American fresh-water fishes, the Coregonidæ, and in certain localities to the bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix). In England the term "white-fish" is used to designate cod, haddock, hake, ling, pollock, soles, turbot, plaice, halibut, and whiting 25. "Mossbunker" is a relic of the days of the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam, and the name is still lovingly retained by the inhabitants of Manhattan Island. It was in use as early as 1661, as we learn from an allusion in Jacob Steendam's poem in "Praise of New Netherland" 't Louf van Niew Nederland).‡ The allusion to the Mossbunker is as follows: "Swart-vis, en Roch, en Haring, en Makreel "The black and rock-fish, herring, mackerel, The haddock, mossbanker, and roach, which fill Cannot be eaten." Allusion has already been made in the letter of Professor Trumbull, to the great schools of "marsbanckers" seen by Dankers and Sluyter on their visit to New York, in 1679, and every one remembers the reference to this fish in Irving's "Knickerbocker," in connection with the death of the renowned trumpeter, Antony Van Corlear, where the name first appears crystallized in its present form. § *This probably misled De Kay, who stated that the menhaden were known at the eastern end of Long Island as "skippaugs." He also remarked that "pauhagen" (pronounced Pauhaugen) was the Narragansett epithet, while "menhaden" was that applied by the Manhattan Indians. + Appendix O. This poem, cited by Professor Trumbull in the Report of the Commission of Fish and Fisheries for 1871-'72, p. 168, was printed, with an English translation, by Hon. Henry C. Murphy, for the Bradford Club, of New York (Anthology of New Netherland: Bradford Club Series, No. 4, 1865, pp. 52, 55). A History of New York * By Diedrich Knickerbocker. New York, 1809. "It was a dark and stormy night when the good Antony arrived at the creek (sagely denominated Haerlem river) which separates the island of Mannahatta from the main The derivation of this name may be easily traced, it having evidently been transferred by the Dutch colonists from the scad or horse-mackerel, Caranx trachurus (Linn.) Lacepede, a fish which annually visits the shores of Northern Europe in immense schools, swimming at the surface in much the same manner as our Brevoortia, and which is known to the Hollanders as the Marsbanker.* In the Museum Ichthyologicum of Gronow,† published in 1754, the name Marsbanker is used in speaking of a scombroid fish, frequently taken with the herring, probably the same below referred to.‡ The name is variously spelled "mossbunker," "mossbonker,” “massbanker," "mousebunker," "marshbunker," "marsh banker," and "morsebonker," and is also familiarly shortened into "bunker," a name in common use at the eastern end of Long Island. 26. The name "alewife" was given by the Virginia colonists to this species from its resemblance to the allied species known by that name in England. This name is preoccupied by the Pomolobus pseudoharengus, and should never be applied to Brevoortia. 27. The presence of a parasitic crustacean (Cymothoa prægustator) in the mouth of Brevoortia, when found in southern waters, explains the name "bug-fish" prevalent in Delaware and Cheaspeake Bays, the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, and the inlets of North Carolina, with its local variations of "bug-head" and "buggy-head."§ "Yellowland. The wind was high, the elements in an uproar, and no Charon could be found to ferry the adventurous sounder of brass across the water. For a short time he vapored like an impatient ghost upon the brink and then, bethinking himself of the urgency of his errand, took a hearty embrace of his stone bottle, swore most valorously that he would swim across in spite of the devil (Spyt den Duyvel), and daringly plunged into the chasm. An old Dutch burgher, famed for his veracity, and who had been a witness of the fact, related to them that he saw the duyvel, in the shape of a huge moss-bonker, seize the sturdy Antony by the leg and drag him beneath the Nobody ever attempts to swim across the creek after dark, and as to the moss-bonkers, they are held in such abhorrence that no good Dutchman will admit them to his table who loves good fish and hates the devil." waves. * * * See Schlegel, Die Dieren van Nederland, Visschen, p. 4. + Museum | Ichthyologicum, | sistens | Piscium | indigenorum & quorundam exoticorum, qui in | Museo | Lawrentii Theodori | Gronovii, J. U. D. | adservantur, descriptiones ordine systematico. | Accedunt | nonnullorum exoticorum Piscium icones æri incisæ. | (Cut) | Lugduni Batavorum, | Apud Theodorum Haak, | MDCCLIV. | folio, 10 preliminary pages, pp. 70. 80. Scomber linea laterali aculeata, pinna ani ossiculorum triginta, Arted. Gen. 25, n. 3, Synon. p. 50, n. 3. Scomber linea laterali curva, tabellis osseis loricata, Gronov. act. ups. 1742, p. 83, ibique defer. Trachurus, Bossuet, epigr. p. 74, Bellon. Aquat. p. 180, Dale. Hist. of Harw., p. 131, n. 5. Belgis Marsbanker Frequentissime in Mari Septentrionale cúm Clupeis p. 5, n. 4, descriptis capitur. Op. cit. p. 34. § Captain Atwood states in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, x, 1865, p. 67, that the half-grown menhaden are called "bug-fish" by the Virginia negroes, because they believe them to have been produced from insects, since they never find spawn in them there. |