OP THE FISHES OF THE OHIO RIVER AJVD ITS TRIBUTARY 



STREAMS, 



BY C. S. RAFINESQUE, 



Trofcssor ofBotany and JVatural History in Trdnsylvania 



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 

 tw^elve species of them had ever been properly named and des- 

 fcribed, when ifi 1818 and 1819, I undertook the labour of col- 

 lecting, observing, describing, and delineating those of the Ohio. 

 I succeeded the first ^ear 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 nuibber, had I been inclined, 

 as will be seen in the course of this ichthyology; but I have in 

 many instances 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 published in his Journal 

 of Natural History, in a Tract named Prodromus of seventy 

 ne%D genera of Animals and fifty new genera of Plants from, 

 ^orth America^ and I now propose to publish a complete ac- 

 count of all the species I have discovered. I am confident that 

 they do not include the whole number ejiisting in the Ohio, 

 much less in the Mississippi; but as they will oflfer a great 



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