Vol. 32, pp. 49-74 May 20, 1919 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE . 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON ^'^^O^i^' 



A LIST OF THE FISHES OF PENNSYLVANIA. 6 



BY HENRY W. FOWLER. i 



The present paper is a summary of the data accumulated 

 during the past twenty years, presented in condensed form, so 

 that the distribution of each species may be traced so far as 

 present details permit. For this reason they are arranged ac- 

 cording to the various hydrographic basins with only the 

 counties mentioned, additional records, where noteworthy, being 

 supplied in parentheses. The work is therefore intended as a 

 slight contribution to the distribution of our local fishes. 



Like many departments of natural history the founding of 

 the binomial system by Carl von Linne in 1758 first establishes 

 several fishes from Philadelphia. Alexander Wilson contributes 

 the first notice of shad and alewife in the article on ichthyology 

 in Ree's Encyclopaedia, to which he secured an assistant editor- 

 ship in 1806. His article was published about 1812. Charles 

 Alexandre Le Sueur is the first to carefully study the fishes of 

 this State, much of his material doubtless having been secured 

 near Philadelphia. He is credited with sixteen of our species, 

 while eight other names he proposes are synonyms. Con- 

 stantine Samuel Rafinesque described many of our species in 

 his Ichtlyologia Ohiensis. The localities given are seldom 

 definite and usually would apply to the entire Ohio basin. He 

 has described twenty-three of our species, besides fourteen 

 synonyms. 



Several of our species are also described by Achille Valen- 

 ciennes, in colaboration with Baron Cuvier, in the great Histoire 

 Naturelle des Poissons. Samuel Stehman Haldeman studied the 

 fauna of the lower Susquehanna, though his contributions to 

 ichthyology are rather incidental. He was signally unfortunate 



1 Published by permission of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 

 14— Phoc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 32, 1919, (49) 



