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[I- 305] [5] NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FISHES 

 OF THE OHIO RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARY 

 STREAMS, BY C. S. RAFINESQUE, PRO- 

 FESSOR OF BOTANY AND NATU- 

 RAL HISTORY IN TRANSYL- 

 VANIA UNIVERSITY 



Introduction 



Nobody had ever paid any correct attention to the 

 fishes of this beautiful river, nor indeed of the whole 

 immense basin, which empties its water into the 

 Mississippi, and hardly twelve species of them had 

 ever been properly named and described, when in 

 18 18 and 1 8 19, I undertook the labour of collecting, 

 observing, describing, and delineating those of the 

 Ohio. I succeeded the first year in ascertaining 

 nearly eighty species among them, and this year I 

 added about twenty more, making altogether about 

 one hundred species of fish, whereof nine tenths are 

 new and undescribed. 



Many of them have compelled me to establish new 

 genera, since they could not properly be united with 

 any former genus ; and I could have increased their 

 number, had I been inclined, as will be seen in the 

 course of this ichthyology ; but I have in many in- 

 stances proposed sub-genera and sections instead of 

 new genera. I sent last spring to Mr. Blainville of 

 Paris, a short account of some of them, to be pub- 

 lished in his Journal of Natural History, in a Tract 



