[62] The author’s attempt here at a general catalogue of the fishes, mollusks, &c., of the North-Atlantic Ocean, affords but a poor make-shift for such a list as we might fairly have expected from him of the species known to the early fishermen in the waters and seas of New England; and the account in his Voyages (pp. 104-15) is again an improvement on the present, and is confined to the inhabitants of our waters. The present editor has little to offer in elucidation of the list; which indeed, in good part, appears sufficiently intelligible. Compare Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, chap. x.
[63] “Like a herrin, but has a bigger bellie; therefore called an alewife.”—Voyages, p. 107. The other names, alize and allow, are doubtless corruptions of the French alose, also in use among London fishmongers to designate shad from certain waters.—Rees’s Cyc., in loco. The old Latin word alosa, supposed to have been always applied to the fish just mentioned, is adopted by Cuvier for the genus which includes our shad, alewife, and menhaden.
[64] The tunny is so called on the coast of New England.—Storer’s Report on the Fishes of Mass., p. 48.
[65] It is, notwithstanding, set down in the author’s list of fishes “that are to be seen and catch’d in the sea and fresh waters in New England.”—Voyages, p. 113. And compare Storer, Synops. (Mem. Am. Acad., N. S., vol. ii.), p. 300.
[66] See Voyages, p. 108. The first settlers esteemed the bass above most other fish. See Higginson’s New-England’s Plantation (Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 120). Wood calls it (New-Eng. Prospect, chap. ix.) “one of the best fish in the country; and though men are soon wearied with other fish, yet are they never with bass. The Indians,” he says, eat lobsters, “when they can get no bass.” The head was especially prized; as see Wood, and also Roger Williams’s Key (Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 224). The fish is our striped bass (Labrax lineatus, Cuv.; Storer’s Report on Fishes of Mass., p. 7). Our author, at [p. 37], again mentions it as one of the eight fishes which “the Indians have in greatest request.”
[67] [See p. 96] as to the blue-fish, or horse-mackerel; and Storer, l. c., p. 57.
[68] The bonito of our fishermen is the skipjack.—Storer, l. c., p. 49.
[70] [See p. 96]. Josselyn’s character of the fish as food is confirmed by Dr. Storer, l. c., p. 69.
[71] The clam is one of the eight fishes mentioned at p. 37 as most prized by the Indians. “Sickishuog (clams). This is a sweet kind of shell-fish, which all Indians generally over the country, winter and summer, delight in; and, at low water, the women dig for them. This fish, and the natural liquor of it, they boil; and it makes their broth and their nasaump (which is a kind of thickened broth) and their bread seasonable and savoury, instead of salt.”—Williams’s Key, &c., l. c. p. 224. “These fishes be in great plenty in most parts of the country: which is a great commodity for the feeding of swine, both in winter and summer; for, being once used to those places, they will repair to them as duly, every ebb, as if they were driven to them by keepers.”—Wood, N. Eng. Prospect, l. c. The mollusk thus approved is the common clam (Mya arenaria, L.); but the poquauhock, or quahog (Venus mercenaria, L.), “which the Indians wade deep and dive for” (R. Williams, l. c., p. 224), was also eaten by them, and the black part of the shell used for making their suckauhock, or black money. Wood speaks also of “clams as big as a penny white loaf, which are great dainties amongst the natives” (N. E. Prospect, l. c.); doubtless the giant clam (Mactra solidissima, Chemn.) of Gould (Report on Invertebr. of Mass., p. 51), which is still esteemed as food.