Note 66 — {23} Thirdly, Of Fishes.[62]

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.”