The History of Ichthyology 395 



rate of faunal lists, and one which shows a fine feeling for tax- 

 onomic distinctions scarcely traceable in any previous author. 

 Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-45), naturalist of Bering's expe- 

 dition, gathered amid incredible hardships the first knowledge 

 of the fishes of Alaska and Siberia, his notes being printed after 

 his tragic death, by Pallas and Krascheninnikov. Petrus 

 Simon Pallas (1741-1811) gives the account of his travels in 

 the North Pacific in his most valuable volumes, "Zoographia 

 Russo-Asiatica " ; Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-55) with Samuel 

 Theophilus Gmelin (1745-84), and Johann Anton Giildenstadt 

 (1745-91), like Steller, crossed Siberia, recording its animals. 

 Johann David Schopf (1752-1800), a Hessian surgeon stationed 

 at Long Island in the Revolutionary War, gave an excellent 

 account of the fishes about New York. 



Still other naturalists accompanied navigators around the 

 globe, collecting specimens and information as opportunity 

 offered. John Reinhold Forster (1729-98), with his son, John 

 George Adam Forster (1754-94), and Daniel Solander (1736- 

 81), a student of Linnaeus, and Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), 

 sailed with Captain James Cook. Philibert Commerson (1727- 

 73) accompanied the explorer, Louis Antoine de Bougainville, 

 and furnished nearly all the original material used by Lace- 

 pede. Other noted travelers of the early days were Pierre 

 Sonnerat and Mungo Park. 



Still other naturalists, scarcely less useful, gave detailed 

 accounts of the fauna of their own native regions. Ablest of 

 these was Anatole Risso, an apothecary of Nice, who published 

 in 1810 the " Ichthyologie de Nice," an excellent work, after- 

 ward (1826) expanded by him into a "Histoire Naturelle de 

 TEurope Meridionale." 



Contemporary with Risso was a man of very different char- 

 acter, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1784-1842), who wrote 

 at Palermo in 1810 his "Caratteri di Alcuni Nuovi Generi" 

 and his " Ittiologia Siciliana." Later he went to America, 

 where he was for a time professor in the Transylvania University 

 at Lexington, Ky. Brilliant, erudite, irresponsible, fantastic, 

 he wrote of the fishes of Sicily and later (" Ichthyologia Ohien- 

 sis," 1820) of the fishes of the Ohio River, with wide knowl- 

 edge, keen taxonomic insight, and a hopeless disregard of the 



