It Is A Great Pity They Did Not Call Those Peculiar To This Continent By Their _Indian_ Names; And This

Should also have been the case with mountains, lakes, rivers, &c. What man of any taste will not prefer the

Sonorous sounds of Susquana, Patapsico, Allegany, Raphanock, Potomack, and other _indian_ titles, to such stupid appellations as Cape Cod, Mud Island, cat-fish, sheep's head-fish, whip poor will, &c.?

But to return to the _shad_, if it must be so called; it is an excellent fish, and comes up the rivers in prodigious shoals, in the months of April and May, to spawn. The largest nets used in this fishery are on the Delaware, where that river is from one to two miles wide. These nets are from one hundred and fifty to three hundred yards long. The greatest hawl ever known was upwards of nine thousand, from four to nine pounds per fish.

The revolution has not yet done away a fanatical law passed by the quakers, prohibiting the catching of these fish on a sunday; which, considering the short time they remain in the river, is highly impolitic.

There are thirteen fisheries within ten miles of Philadelphia; allowing only eight sundays in the season, and ten thousand shads lost in each of the twenty-four hours, a very moderate calculation, the aggregate loss to Philadelphia, and the adjacent country, is eighty thousand fish, weighing five pounds each, on an average. I say _loss_; for the return of the fish is the same now as it was a hundred and thirty years ago, when only a few dozen were taken in the season by the Indians.

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