1896. SOME NEW BOOKS. 339 



distinction to animals and plants, patterns of even widely different 

 " species " may hybridise freely, and with excellent results. 



The book is well indexed, and the illustrations are numerous and 

 well chosen. The eight plates at the end of the volume are taken 

 en masse from a paper by Dr. Colley March. It is a pity that the 

 publication seems to have been hurried. In the copy before us, at 

 any rate, the illustrations, which cannot have been dry when the 

 sheets were bound up, have left indelible impressions upon the 

 opposite pages which are eminently unsightly : an easily avoidable 

 and therefore inexcusable blemish. This, however, does not impair 

 the scientific value of the work, which should appeal to a wide class 

 of readers. Henry Balfour. 



Perciform Fish. 

 Catalogue OF THE Fishes IN THE British Museum. By G. A. Boulenger. Second 

 edition. Vol. i. Pp. xix., 394, with 15 plates. Published by order of the 

 Trustees. London, 1895. Price 15s. 



In 1870, Dr. Albert Glinther completed his great enumeration of all 

 known fishes, bearing the general title " Catalogue of the Fishes in 

 the British Museum." Just a quarter of a century later the publica- 

 tion of a new enumeration was commenced as a second edition with 

 the same title as Dr. Giinther's work. The first volume now published 

 has also the specific title " Catalogue of the Perciform Fishes of the 

 British Museum. Second Edition. Volume First." The author of 

 this new "Catalogue" is Mr. George Albert Boulenger, the work is 

 cast on different Unes from the first edition, and the secondary title is 

 entirely different from any that has appeared before, and, therefore, it 

 is only the supposed exigency of Museum administration that justifies 

 the designation of the new work as an edition of the old Catalogue. 



During the thirty-five years that have elapsed since the publica- 

 tion of the first volume of Dr. Giinther's Catalogue, the nominal 

 additions to the species have been very numerous, but still more note- 

 worthy has been the deviation of many ichthyologists from the system 

 therein proposed. Nevertheless the old system has continued to find 

 favour with most European ichthyologists ; consequently there has 

 arisen a division into two " schools " one comprising most all the 

 x\merican ichthyologists, the second most of the others. Naturally 

 curiosity will be excited to learn how both questions — numbers and 

 system — are viewed in the new Catalogue. 



Probably by most experienced ichthyologists it has been believed 

 that many of the supposed new species would not stand the test of 

 critical examination ; but few, if any, will be prepared for the sweeping 

 reductions which have found expression in the Catalogue of the Perci- 

 form Fishes. In the corresponding portion of the old work, mostly 

 published in 1859, 393 nominal species of the groups under considera- 

 tion were enumerated, but " only 317 were considered as apparently 

 well characterised." In the present volume, only 375 species are 

 recognised. This reduction is the result, not only of identification of 

 rnany of the " doubtful species " of the old work, but of some con- 

 sidered " well characterised " and of most of the subsequently described 

 species. Some of the identifications rather startle one ; such is the 

 degradation of the " Batvachus gigas, Gunther," in the synonymy of the 

 common Epinephelus lanceolatus. The supposed Batvachus was based 

 on a dried head and has long been a puzzle ; in view of the positive 

 statement by so experienced an ichthyologist as Dr. Gunther that 

 "its appearance and structure" are those of a Batvachus, and the 

 trenchant characters of that genus, no one has ventured to doubt that 



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