ON ICHTHYOLOGY IN GENERAL. .') 



view of the subject.) Now, fish don't lend themselves 

 to this kind of thing ; if you want to see them to 

 advantage you must study them while they are fresh, 

 or if possible alive, or, best of all, in their natural 

 element. 



You can certainly preserve specimens in bottles of 

 spirits, but they do not retain their beauty in this 

 way, and except in a public museum for reference 

 and comparison, such specimens have no interest. 

 Thus the ichthyologist has no trophies to gloat over ; 

 " nothing to show" for all his trouble and investi- 

 gations. 



Another thing that may at the outset serve to deter 

 people from studying the natural history of fishes, 

 is the formidable appearance of the nomenclature, and 

 the amount of scientific and anatomical terms that 

 abound in all books on this subject. 



Few attempts have as yet been made to popu- 

 larise the subject, and as yet, it may be said, the 

 subject is comparatively a new one; the great ob- 

 ject hitherto has been to collect facts, to find out 

 new species, to compare them one with another, and 

 to collect them into natural groups according to their 

 affinities ; in short, to classify them. 



For this kind of work the utmost accuracy is 

 necessary; a rough description of a fish, such as 

 would convey some idea of what it was like to a per- 

 son who had not studied the subject, would be per- 

 fectly useless for purposes of classification, as it 

 would probably omit the very points which it would 



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