338 NATURAL SCIENCE. May. 



out. Unknown as many of them are on the Continent, there is great 

 ground for suspicion that they are not vahd. 



The descriptive part of the work appears excellent, and the hints 

 on collecting will be most useful. The scanty records of localities are 

 deplored as much by the author as they can be by any one. We 

 only hope the book will prove a stimulus to collectors and students 

 generally. 



Deep-Sea and Pelagic Fishes. 



Oceanic Ichthyology : a Treatise on the Deep-sea and Pelagic Fishes of the 

 World, based chiefly upon the Collections made by the Steamers Blake, 

 Albatross, and Fish Hawk in the Northwestern Atlantic. By George Brown 

 Goode and Tarleton H. Bean. 4to. Pp. xxxv., 553, with Atlas containing 417 

 figures. Washington : Smithsonian Institution (United States National Museum 

 Special Bulletin), dated 1895, received direct through the Smithsonian Exchange, 

 January, 1897. 



The United States National Museum has done a great service to 

 ichthyology in publishing these two handsome volumes (text and 

 atlas) on the fishes of the deep sea and the extra-littoral parts of the 

 ocean. The work is an attempt, by two of the most distinguished 

 American ichthyologists, to summarise all that is known concerning 

 these fishes, incorporating the results of their own researches with 

 those of their predecessors, and making the whole a useful handbook 

 not merely for specialists in the subject but also for biologists more 

 immediately interested in other fields. It has, moreover, a 

 melancholy interest as being the last great undertaking of the senior 

 author, whose loss we have recently had to mourn (Nat. Sci., vol. ix,, 

 p. 339, Nov., 1896). 



All oceanic fishes are included in this Treatise, partly because it 

 is not yet possible to distinguish strictly between the two classes, and 

 partly because the pelagic form.s have often been mentioned in the 

 discussions by previous writers on the deep-sea fishes. The strangest, 

 however, are those from great depths, and it is in these that the 

 chief interest of the work centres. The authors estimate that about 

 600 species have already been obtained from a depth of 1,000 feet or 

 more. They also conclude that a very good general idea of the 

 character of this fauna has already been acquired ; for no startling 

 novelties have appeared for several years, and the chief result of 

 recent dredgings is the re-discovery of known types in new localities. 



At the same time, there are many new genera and species to be 

 found in most untried spots ; and scarcely a beginning has been 

 made in capturing the larger, swifter, and more cunning forms. The 

 gigantic oar-fish (Regalecus), for example, a serpent-shaped, rapidly 

 swimming creature, sometimes over twenty feet in length, has never 

 yet been captured ; although within the last century and a half dead 

 specimens have been picked up on the shores of Norway, the Faroe 

 Islands, Scotland, Ireland, England, France, the Mediterranean, 

 Bermuda, the Cape of Good Hope, Hindustan, and New Zealand. 

 Its world-wide distribution and the number of waifs give evidence 

 that it is abundant in mid-ocean, yet the exploring ships in all the 

 years of their combined searchings have found no vestiges of it, old 

 or young. Where Regalecus lives, there may be others. Indeed, Drs. 

 Goode and Bean think " it cannot be doubted that somewhere in the 

 sea, at an unknown distance below the surface, there are living 

 certain fish-like animals, unknown to science and of great size, which 

 come occasionally to the surface and give a foundation to such stories 

 as those of the sea serpent." 



