PROLOGUE. 



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Athen^eus : Deipnosophia. 



CC/^OME, let us discourse about fish," said Athenaeus, in his " Deipno- 

 sophia," and so said Mr. A. R. Hart, coming into my study- 

 last January. "Write us a book about fish and fishing in America," 

 he urged, and since, as it happens, I know more about fish and fishing in 

 America than I do about anything else, I consented. 



This volume has been prepared for the use of the angler, the lover of 

 nature, and the general reader. It is not intended for naturalists, and the 

 technicalities of zoological description have therefore been avoided ; for 

 the concise and precise phraseology of science, admirable though it be for 

 the use of those who have been trained to employ it, is to others not only 

 misleading, but it may be, repulsive. 



I have aimed to include in my discussion every North American fish 

 which is likely to be of interest to the general reader, either because of 

 its gameness or its economic uses. All others are excluded, because, 

 from the standpoint of scientific interest, every one of the seventeen hun- 

 dred and fifty species indigenous to our continent has equal claim to con- 

 sideration, and to discuss, or even casually mention them all, within the 

 limits of a book of ordinary size, would be next to impossible. President 

 Jordan's recent pamphlet, entitled "A Catalogue of the Fishes Known 

 to Inhabit the Waters North of the Tropic of Cancer, with notes on the 

 Species Discovered in 1883 and 1884," contains, with its indexes, 184 

 pages, and this is merely a list. His "Synopsis of the Fishes of North 

 America," which simply enumerates and gives brief diagnoses of the four- 

 teen hundred or more species known in 1882, contains 1018 pages. The 

 former of these works is published by the United States Fish Commission, 

 the latter by the National Museum, and to these and to the numerous 

 monographic papers published in the transactions of learned societies and 

 scientific institutions in America and abroad, I would refer the student 



