Flounder comes from the verb, which in turn is derived from flounce, a word which is lost in antiquity. Tarpon (and the form _tarpum_) may be an Indian word; while there is no doubt as to grouper coming from _garrupa_, a native Mexican name. Chubb (a form of cub) meant a chunky mass or lump, referring to the body of the fish. Shad is lost in _sceadda_, Anglo-Saxon for the same fish.
Lamprey and halibut both have histories, which, at first glance, we would never suspect, although the forms have changed but little. The former have a habit of fastening themselves for hours to stones and rocks, by means of their strong, sucking mouths. So the Latin form of the word _lampetra_, or literally lick-rock, is very appropriate. Halibut is equally so. _But_ or _bot_ in several languages means a certain flounder-like fish, and in olden times this fish was eaten only on holidays (_i.e._, holy days). Hence the combination halibut means really holy-flounder.
The meaning of these words and many others are worth knowing, and it is well to be able to answer with other than ignorance the question "What's in a name?"
When a radical change of habits occurs, as in the sapsucker, deviating so sharply from the ancient principles of its family, many other forms of life about it are influenced, indirectly, but in a most interesting way. In its tippling operations it wastes quantities of sap which exudes from the numerous holes and trickles down the bark of the wounded tree. This proves a veritable feast for the forlorn remnant of wasps and butterflies,--the year's end stragglers whose flower calyces have fallen and given place to swelling seeds.
Swiftly up wind they come on the scent, eager as hounds on the trail, and they drink and drink of the sweets until they become almost incapable of flying. But, after all, the new lease of life is a vain semblance of better things. Their eggs have long since been laid and their mission in life ended, and at the best their existence is but a matter of days.
It is a sad thing this, and sometimes our heart hardens against Nature for the seeming cruelty of it all. Forever and always, year after year, century upon century, the same tale unfolds itself,--the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the race. A hundred drones are tended and reared, all but one to die in vain; a thousand seeds are sown to rot or to sprout and wither; a million little codfish hatch and begin life hopefully, perhaps all to succumb save one; a million million shrimp and pteropods paddle themselves here and there in the ocean, and every one is devoured by fish or swept into the whalebone tangle from which none ever return. And if a lucky one which survives does so because it has some little advantage over its fellows,--some added quality which gives just the opportunity to escape at the critical moment,--then the race will advance to the extent of that trifle and so carry out the precept of evolution. But even though we may owe every character of body and mind to the fulfilment of some such inexorable law in the past, yet the witnessing of the operation brings ever a feeling of cruelty, of injustice somewhere.