The History of Ichthyology 397 



cal ways, sometimes brilliant, occasionally of deep insight, but 

 more often, on the whole, dull, plodding, and mechanical. 



Earliest of those is Antoine Gouan, whose "Historia Pisci- 

 um" was published in Paris in 1770. In this work, which is of 

 fair quality, only genera were included, and the three new ones 

 which he introduces into the "System" (Lepadogaster, Lepi- 

 dopus, and Trachypterus) are still retained with his definition of 

 them. 



Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1748-1804), a relative of the ex- 

 plorers of Siberia, published in 1788 a thirteenth edition of the 

 "Systema Naturae" of Linnaeus, adding to it the discoveries of 

 Forskal, Forster, and others who had written since Linnaeus' 

 time. This work was useful as bringing the compilation of 

 Linnaeus to a later date, but it is not well done, the compiler 

 having little knowledge of the animals described and little pene- 

 tration in matters of taxonomy. Very similar in character, 

 although more lucid in expression, is the French compilation 

 of the same date (1788), "Tableau Encyclopedique et Metho- 

 dique des Trois Regnes de la Nature," by the Abb6 J. P. Bon- 

 naterre. Another volume of the "Encyclopedic Methodique," 

 of still less merit, was published as a dictionary in Paris in 1787 

 by Rene Just Haiiy. Another dictionary in 1817 even poorer 

 was the work of Hippolyte Cloquet. 



In 1792, Johann Julius Walbaum (1721-1800), a German 

 compiler of a little higher rank, gathered together the records 

 of all known species, using the work of Artedi as a basis and 

 giving binominal names in place of the vernacular terms used 

 by Schopf, Steller, Pennant, and Krascheninnikov. 



Far more pretentious and more generally useful, as well as 

 containing a large amount of original material, is the " Ichthyo- 

 logia" of Mark Eliezer Bloch, published in Berlin in various 

 parts from 1782 to 1785. It was originally in German and 

 divided into two portions " Oeconomische Naturgeschichte 

 der Fische Deutschlands " and "Naturgeschichte der ausland- 

 ischen Fische." Bloch was a Jewish physician, born at Ans- 

 pach in 1723, and at the age of fifty-six began to devote himself 

 to ichthyology. In his great work is contained every species 

 which he had himself seen, every one which he could purchase 



