Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861

And here there is diversion for philologist as well as fisherman; for while the latter is catching the fish, the former may seize on the fact, that in this word, Scuppaug , is to be found the origin of the two separate names by which Argyrops, the silver-eyed, is miscalled in local vernacular. True to the national proclivity for clipping names, the fishermen of Rhode Island appeal to him by the first syllable only of his Indian one,—for in the waters thereabout he is talked of by the familiar abbreviation, Scup. But to the excursionists and fishermen of New York he is known only as Porgy, or Paugie , a form as obviously derived from the last syllable of his Indian name as the emphatic "siree" of our greatest orators is from the modest monosyllable "sir." Porgy seems to be the accepted form of the word; but letters of the old, unphonetic kind are poor guides to pronunciation. And a beautiful, clean-scaled fish is Porgy,—whose g , by-the-by, as I learned from a funny man in the heterogeneous crowd, is pronounced "hard, as in 'git eowt.'" A lovely fish is he, as he comes dripping up the side of the vessel from his briny pastures. Silver is the pervading gleam of his oval form; but while he is yet wet and fresh, the silver is flushed with a chromatic radiance of gold, and violet, and pale metallic green, all blending and harmonizing like the mother-o'-pearl lustre in some rare sea-shell. The true value of this fish is not of a commercial kind, for he cannot be deemed particularly exquisite in a gastronomic sense; neither is he staple as a provision of food. His virtue lies in the inducement offered to him by the citizen of moderate means, who, for a trifling outlay, can secure for himself and family the invigorating influence of the salt sea-breezes, by having a run down outside the Hook any fine day in summer, with an object. The average weight of the porgy of these banks may be set down at about a pound.

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