Part 36

One of the fishes most valued by the Indians (p. 37); but “not much set by” by the English, according to Wood, l. c.

“I have seene some myselfe that have weighed 16 pound; but others have had, divers times, so great lobsters as have weighed 25 pound, as they assure me.”—Higginson’s New-Eng. Plantation, l. c., p. 120; with which compare Gould’s Report, &c., p. 360. “Their plenty makes them little esteemed, and seldom eaten.”—Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, chap. ix. At p. 37, Josselyn counts them among the fishes, &c., most esteemed by the Indians; but Wood (l. c.) qualifies this in a passage already cited. The Indians, it seems, sometimes dried them, “as they do lampres and oysters; which are delicate breakfast-meat so ordered.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 110. See the Indian way of catching lobsters, in Voyages, p. 140.

“Munk-fish, a flat-fish like scate; having a hood like a fryer’s cowl” (p. 96). Lophius Americanus, Cuv., the sea-devil of Storer (Synops. of Amer. Fishes, in Mem. Amer. Acad., N. S., vol. ii. p. 381), is called monk-fish in Maine.—Williamson, Hist., vol. i. p. 157.

See p. 97.

“The muscle is of two sorts,—sea-muscles (in which they find pearl) and river-muscles.”—Voyages, p. 110. See p. 37, of the present volume, for an account of “the scarlet muscle,” which ... “yieldeth a perfect purple or scarlet juice; dyeing linnen so that no washing will wear it out,” &c. This could scarcely have been a Purpura or Buccinum.

See Voyages, p. 110. “The oysters be great ones,” says Wood; “in form of a shoe-horn: some be a foot long. These breed on certain banks that are bare every spring-tide.”—New-Eng. Prospect, chap. ix. This was in the waters of Massachusetts Bay, where Higginson (New-Eng. Plantation, l. c., p. 120) also speaks of their being found. The question whether the oyster is an indigenous inhabitant of our bay, or only an introduced stranger, is considered by Dr. Gould (Report on Invert. Animals of Mass., pp. 135, 365).

One of the fishes “in greatest request” among the Indians (p. 37). Wood says it “is as good as it is in England, and in great plenty in some places.”—New-Eng. Prospect, chap. ix.

“The shads be bigger than the English shads, and fatter.”—Wood, l. c.

“Taut-auog (sheep’s-heads).” So Roger Williams’s Key, l. c., p. 224. It is probable, therefore, that our author had the fish that we call tautog in his mind here. What is now called sheep’s-head is not known in Massachusetts Bay and northward.—Storer, l. c., p. 36.

See p. 34; and Wood, l. c., chap. ix.

See p. 96. It appears to be the mollusk, the shell of which is well known as the razor-shell (Solen ensis, L.).—Gould, Report, p. 28.

See p. 32. “The sturgeons be all over the country; but the best catching of them is upon the shoals of Cape Cod and in the river of Merrimack, where much is taken, pickled, and brought to England. Some of these be 12, 14, and 18 feet long.”—Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, chap. ix. R. Williams says that “the natives, for the goodness and greatness of it, much prize it; and will neither furnish the English with so many, nor so cheap, that any great trade is like to be made of it, until the English themselves are fit to follow the fishing.”—Key, l. c., p. 224. It is one of Josselyn’s eight fish which are in “greatest request” with the Indians (p. 37). He calls “Pechipscut” River, in Maine, “famous for multitudes of mighty large sturgeon.”—Voyages, p. 204.

See Voyages, pp. 105-6.

“This fish is much used for bait to catch a cod, hacke, polluck, and the like sea-fish.”—Voyages, p. 107. It is still so used.

Described at p. 95.

See p. 34 of this, and p. 109 of the Voyages, where the author says, “Of sea-turtles, there are five sorts; of land-turtles, three sorts,—one of which is a right land-turtle, that seldom or never goes into the water; the other two being the river-turtle and the pond-turtle.”—See also the author’s observations on sea-turtles, at p. 39 of the Voyages.

“Trouts there be good store in every brook; ordinarily two and twenty inches long. Their grease is good for the piles and clifts.”—Voyages, p. 110.

See Storer’s Report, p. 146.

See p. 35; and Voyages, p. 104. “The natives cut them in several parcel, and give and send them far and near for an acceptable present or dish.”—R. Williams, Key, l. c., p. 224.

See Voyages, p. 110. This is the common sea-egg; Echinus granulatus, Say.—Gould’s Rep., p. 344.

See p. 24 and note.

Our author’s account of the fishes of New England may take this of old Wood (N. E. Prospect, l. c.) for a tail-piece. “The chief fish for trade,” says he, “is a cod; but, for the use of the country, there is all manner of fish, as followeth:—

“The king of waters,—the sea-shouldering Whale; The snuffing Grampus, with the oily seal; The storm-presaging Porpus, Herring-hog; Line-shearing Shark, the Cat-fish, and Sea-dog; The scale-fenced Sturgeon; wry-mouthed Hollibut; The flouncing Salmon, Codfish, Greedigut; Cole, Haddick, Hake, the Thornback, and the Scate, (Whose slimy outside makes him seld’ in date;) The stately Bass, old Neptune’s fleeting post, That tides it out and in from sea to coast; Consorting Herrings, and the bony Shad; Big-bellied Alewives; Mackrels richly clad With rainbow-colour, the Frost-fish and the Smelt, As good as ever Lady Gustus felt; The spotted Lamprons; Eels; the Lamperies, That seek fresh-water brooks with Argus-eyes: These watery villagers, with thousands more, Do pass and repass near the verdant shore.”

See p. 97.

The account in the Voyages (pp. 114-23) is better; and Wood’s, in New-England’s Prospect, chap. xi. (to which last, Josselyn was possibly indebted), far better.

See “the generating of these creatures,” in Voyages, p. 119. “Here, likewise,” says Wood, “be great store of frogs, which, in the spring, do chirp and whistle like a bird; and, at the latter end of summer, croak like our English frogs.”—N. Eng. Prospect, l. c. In his Voyages, Josselyn speaks (as Wood had done) of the tree-toad, and also of another kind of toad; and of “the eft, or swift, ... a most beautiful creature to look upon; being larger than ours, and painted with glorious colours: but I lik’d him never the better for it” (p. 119).

Wood’s account (New-Eng. Prospect, l. c.) is worth comparing with Higginson’s (New-England’s Plantation, l. c.) and with Josselyn’s, both here and at pp. 23 and 114 of the Voyages. Wood justly says of this “most poisonous and dangerous creature,” that it is “nothing so bad as the report goes of him.... He is naturally,” he continues, “the most sleepy and unnimble creature that lives; never offering to leap or bite any man, if he be not trodden on first: and it is their desire, in hot weather, to lie in paths where the sun may shine on them; where they will sleep so soundly, that I have known four men to stride over them, and never awake her.... Five or six men,” he adds, “have been bitten by them; which, by using of snake-weed” (compare the preface to this, p. 119), “were all cured; never any yet losing his life by them. Cows have been bitten; but, being cut in divers places, and this weed thrust into their flesh, were cured. I never heard of any beast that was yet lost by any of them, saving one mare” (l. c.). Of other serpents, Wood mentions the black snake; and Josselyn, in his Voyages (l. c.), speaks of “infinite numbers, of various colours;” and especially of “one sort that exceeds all the rest; and that is the checkquered snake, having as many colours within the checkquers shadowing one another as there are in a rainbow.” He says again, “The water-snake will be as big about the belly as the calf of a man’s leg” which is, perhaps, the water-adder. Josselyn adds, “I never heard of any mischief that snakes did” (l. c.); and so Wood: “Neither doth any other kind of snakes” (the rattle-snake always excepted, as no doubt dangerous when trodden on) “molest either man or beast.” There are perhaps no worse prejudices in common life, than those which breed cruelty. In the Voyages (p. 23), our author makes mention “of a sea-serpent, or snake, that lay quoiled up like a cable upon a rock at Cape Ann. A boat passing by with English aboard, and two Indians, they would have shot the serpent: but the Indians disswaded them; saying, that, if he were not kill’d outright, they would be all in danger of their lives.” This was from “some neighbouring gentlemen in our house, who came to welcome me into the countrey;” and it seems, that, “amongst variety of discourse, they told me also of a young lyon (not long before) killed at Piscataway by an Indian;” which, indeed, was possibly not without foundation. And as to the serpent, compare a Report of a Committee of the Linnæan Society of New England relative to a large marine animal, supposed to be a serpent, seen near Cape Ann, Mass., in August, 1817 (Boston, 1817); which contains also a full account of a smaller animal—supposed not to differ, even in species, from the large—which was taken on the rocks of Cape Ann.—See also Storer, Report on the Reptiles of Mass.; Supplement, p. 410.

The author continues his entomological observations, in his Voyages, p. 115; and the account is fuller than Wood’s; New-England’s Prospect, chap. xi.