16 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPATIATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



nient decrite vers la fin de 1831 et pendant las Imit premiers mois de 

 I'annee 1832, et j'ai inscrit mes determinations sur le revers de toutes 

 les plaques." ^ 



The total number of species recognized by Agassiz as the result of his 

 investigations of the Gazola Collection and other Bolca material that 

 came under his observation was 127, and the total number of genera 77. 

 Many of Volta's types were refigured by him, but in several cases 

 descriptions were given without fresh illustration, and in others Volta's 

 figures were merely renamed without further description. Some con-, 

 fusion in the nomenclature was occasioned by reason of other names 

 being applied to species which had been duly established both by Volta 

 and by de Blainville, and in about a dozen instances MS. names were 

 proposed for certain forms which up to the present time have remained 

 undescribed. These types inedits, designated as such in Agassiz's hand- 

 writing, have recentlj'^ been investigated by the present writer, and their 

 publication undertaken by the French Geological Society. It must not 

 be supposed, however, that all of Volta's types which originally formed 

 part of the Gazola Collection are now preserved in the Paris Museum, 

 nor was it possible even in Agassiz's time to account for the specimens 

 which were then missing.^ Owing to the historic and scientific interest 

 attaching to these originals, it is to be hoped that all such as are still in 

 existence and have escaped notice amongst other collections may again 

 come to light. Lists are given below of all the types and hypotypes 

 belonging to the Gazola Collection in Paris. 



It will be sufficient to pass over the post-Agassizian literature of 

 the Bolca fish-fauna very briefly, merely indicating the names of the 

 principal contributors. These are, in clironological order, Jacob Meckel, 

 Rudolf Kner, Franz Steindachner, Ratfaele Molin, Abramo Massalongo, 

 Paolo Lioy, Achille de Zigno, Francesco Bassani, Wladislaw Szajnocha, 



1 Agassiz, L., Poissons Fossiles, I. p. 5. Neuchatel, 1833. 



2 The Library of tlic Museum of Comparative Zoology possesses the identical 

 copy of Volta's work employed by Professor Agassiz in his determinations of the 

 types in the Gazola Collection at Paris. Each figure of the plates is marked with 

 Agassiz's revised designation, and in cases where the originals were wanting, the 

 fact is so indicated. Ilis private copy of de Blainville's Poissons Fossiles, in 

 the same library, likewise contains valuable corrections and annotations. The 

 Museum has received through Prof. R. T. Jackson, who obtained it from Prof. 

 J. E. Wolff, a specimen which formerly belonged to the Gazola Collection at Paris, 

 but wliich disappeared from it probably during some of the early vicissitudes through 

 wliicli the collection passed. Several interesting notices of the latter are to be found 

 in the papers of Faujas-St.-Fond, de Jussieu, Cuvier, and others, published in tlie 

 early volumes of the Annales and of the Me'moires da Museum d'llisioire Naturelle. 



