6 



proportion of them, and, a<? the additional species may be grad- 

 ually described in supplements, I venture to introduce them to 

 the acquaintance of the American and European naturalists; 

 being confident that they will not be deemed an inconsiderable 

 addition to our actual knowledge of. the finny tribes. To the 

 inhabitants of the western states, to those who feed daily upon 

 them, their correct and scientific account ought to be peculi- 

 arly agreeable. I trust they will value the exertions through 

 which I have been able to accomplish so much in so short a 

 period of time, and I wish I could induce them to lend me 

 their aid, in the succession of my studies of those animals, by 

 communicating new facts, details, and rare species. I may as- 

 sure them that their kind help shall be gratefully received and 

 acknowledged. 



The science of Ichthyology has lately received great additions 

 in the United States. A few of the atlantic fishes had been for- 

 merly enumerated by Catesby, Kalm, Forster,Garden, Linngeus 

 Schoepf, Castiglione, Bloch, Bosc, and Lacepede; but Dr. Sam- 

 uel L. Mitchell has increased our knowledge, with about one 

 hundred new species at once, in his two memoirs on the Fishes 

 of New-York, the first published in 1814, in the Transactions of 

 the Literary and Philosophical Society of New- York, and the 

 second in the American Monthly Magazine in 1817. Mr. Le- 

 sueur was the first naturalist who visited Lake Erie and Lake 

 Ontario, where he detected a great number of new species, 

 which he has already begun to publish in the Journal of the A- 

 cademy of Sciences of Philadelphia, and which he means to in- 

 troduce in his General History of American Fishes, a work on 

 the plan of Wilson's Ornithology, which he has long had in 

 contemplation. And I have added thereto about forty new spe- 

 cies, which I discovered in Lake Champlaiu, Lake George, the 

 Chesapeake, the Hudson, near New- York, Philadelphia, the 

 Atlantic, 8cc. and published in my Prtcis des Decouvertes^ my 

 Memoirs on Sturgeons, my dccads and tracts in the Amer- 

 ican Monthly Magazine, the American Journal of Science, &c. 

 besides three new fishes of the Ohio, published in the Journal 

 of the Academy of Philadelphia. 

 Many other fishes of the United States have been partially 



