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peculiar bleaching effect of the alkaline waters of that legion. The fishes are all 

 reduced to a nearly uniform pale or faded appearance. Except those found in 

 the headwaters above the alkali, they seem to be almost wholly without pigment 

 cells of any kind. Perhaps the most extreme case of bleaching is that of Platytfohio 

 gracilis, which, of ail American fishes, seems to be the one most perfectly adapted 

 to life in these alkaline streams. 



An examination of the literature shows that seventy four nominal species 

 have been described as new from Missouri basin localities. These seventy-four 

 names represent fifty-one species as now understood, but all but twenty-eight 

 of the seventy-four nominal species had already been described, so only twentv- 

 eight of them were really new. Indeed, we are inclined to think that a little closer 

 investigation will show at least eleven of these twenty-eight to have been not 

 new, so that of the seventy-four fishes which have been described as new from 

 the Missouri basin only seventeen, or about 23 per cent., were really so. 



TABLE GIVING NAMES OF DESCRIBERS OF MISSOURI BASIN FISHES, THE NUMBER 

 DESCRIBED BY EACH, AND THE NUMBER OF EACH WHICH STILL HOLD. 



