12 ON THE ICHTHYOLOGICAL SYSTEM 



But the Synoptical Table of species, perhaps justly regarded 

 by Ichthyologists as the most useful part in systematic treatises 

 of this description, it is judged best to defer until the com- 

 pletion of the Histoire Naturelle des Poissons; when the 

 author will furnish one from his own pen, corrected and 

 improved to the final termination of that important work. 

 Those who have made the natural history of fishes their par- 

 ticular pursuit, will best comprehend the propriety of delay 

 on our parts, until this Synopsis is published : for although 

 we might furnish a table sufficiently exact and conformable to 

 the views of the author, as far as the published volumes of 

 his great work would allow, many species which the Baron 

 alone has been enabled to compare and finally determine, 

 would be with us liable to a false location, and a vast number 

 of others, as yet only described in his manuscripts, would 

 remain unnoticed. Were we therefore to produce a synopsis 

 confessedly incomplete, while one from our author thus highly 

 qualified may be confidently expected, we should be justly 

 liable to an imputation of disrespect to him and injustice to 

 the public \ 



The title of the great work on the Natural History of Fishes 

 has already been so often repeated, and we intend in the 

 course of our observations to draw so largely from this in- 

 valuable source of information, that it will, we trust, be an 

 acceptable service rendered those who are not in possession 

 of the original, to devote a few pages to a slight sketch of this 

 monument of erudition and research : for, if the numerous 

 works of Baron Cuvier, had long before the present, satisfied 

 the scientific of all countries, with regard to his unrivalled 



1 It is necessary to observe that this was written shortly before the 

 lamented death of the Baron ; but as the Histoire Naturelle des Poissons is 

 still in progress under the superintendence of M. Valenciennes, the reason 

 here suggested which has induced us to forego publishing a synopsis of 

 the species at present, still exists. 



