548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his work. For every fisherman in Havana knows " Don Felipe," and 

 looks upon him as a personal friend. Each one regards the fame which 

 Don Felipe's studies of the fishes is vaguely understood to have brought 

 him in that little-known world outside of Havana as in some sort 

 reflected on himself. The writer was told, by a dealer in the Pesca- 

 deria Grande, that for twenty years Don Felipe Poey was there in the 

 markets every day, when at noon the fishes came in from the boats, 

 and that he knew more about the fishes of Cuba than even the fishermen 

 themselves. And, now that Don Felipe no longer visits the markets, 

 he is not forgotten there, and many a rare specimen still finds its way 

 from the Pescaderia to Don Felipe's study in the Calle San Nicolas. 



Felipe Poet y Aloy was born in Havana, May 26, 1799. His father 

 was French, his mother Spanish, but Poey early renounced his French 

 citizenship for that of Cuba. His education was received in Havana, 

 and after studying law he became, in 1823, an advocate in that city. 

 But his tastes lay in the direction of natural history, and for this he 

 gradually abandoned his practice as a lawyer. Very early he had made 

 discoveries of mollusks, insects, and especially of fishes, which were 

 new to science. In 1826 he sailed for Paris, taking with him eighty- 

 five drawings of Cuban fishes and a collection of thirty-five species, 

 preserved in a barrel of brandy. These drawings and specimens he 

 placed at the service of Cuvier and Valenciennes, who were then 

 beginning the publication of their work on the " Natural History of 

 the Fishes." The notes and drawings of Poey proved of much service 

 to the great ichthyologists. A few new species were based on them, 

 and Poey had the satisfaction of finding his own name and observa- 

 tions cited by Cuvier and Valenciennes even more frequently than 

 those of his famous predecessor, Don Antonio Parra,* who had pub- 

 lished, in 1787, the first account of the " Fishes of Cuba." A set of 

 duplicates of these notes and drawings is still retained by Professor 

 Poey. While in Paris, Poey was one of the original members who 

 founded the Entomological Society of France. 



On returning to Havana in 1833, Poey gave himself still more fully 

 to the study of natural history, and greater practice gave to his draw- 

 ings and notes more exactness and value. With the appearance of the 

 successive volumes of the " Histoire Naturelle des Poissons," he at- 

 tempted to identify the fishes of his market, as well as to study their 

 osteology and general anatomy. Animals other than fishes he also 

 tried to study, but in most groups he found the literature in so scat- 

 tered and unsatisfactory a condition that he rarely ventured to publish 

 the results of his observations. Among the fishes, however, thanks to 

 the general work of Cuvier and Valenciennes, and later to that of Dr. 

 Gunther, he felt himself on comparatively firm ground, and ventured 

 to name as new those which he could not identify. Among the land- 



* " Y tuve el honor dc ser citado por 61 (Cuvier) y por su colaborador Valenciennes, 

 m^s frecueiitemeate que D. Antonio Parra." — Poey. 



