xiv Preface 



With multiauthorship, instead of dual authorship as in the case of Parts i and 2, and 

 with wide variation in both subject matter and available material, treatment and em- 

 phasis vary extensively according to authorship. All of the papers in these three Parts 

 have been edited by me to a greater or lesser extent, except the Family Sternoptychidae 

 in Part 4, which is published as it was submitted by the Editors-in-Chief. 



All of these volumes should prove to be of considerable value in one way or an- 

 other to the ichthyologists and to other students of the sea. To the average reader, and 

 to sport and commercial fishermen in particular. Part 3 will be of special interest, for 

 here is contained a large accumulation of facts about the tarpon, ladyfish, bonefish, shad, 

 salmon, and trout, all of which are sportsmen's favorites, and about the sturgeon, an- 

 chovy, herring, pilchard, sardine, smelt, menhaden, and shad, many of which are im- 

 portant to man either directly as table food or indirectly as food for the larger in- 

 habitants of the sea that are of economic value to man. 



As in the case of Parts i and 2, the geographic area for these studies has been 

 arbitrarily defined as that extending from the vicinity of Hudson Bay, just below the 

 fringe of the Arctic, southward to the tropical latitudes of the Amazon, and seaward 

 more or less to the mid-Atlantic, including Bermuda and all of the Caribbean archipel- 

 ago. Although most of the accounts in these volumes treat fishes that spend at least 

 part of their life-span in waters ranging from brackish to maximum salinities, a few, 

 known at present from fresh water only, have been included when, in the author's 

 opinion, they are likely to be taken in brackish or saline situations at some future date. 



The format, general organization, and arrangement of the included material have 

 been modified from Parts i and 2 only insofar as the subject matter and the demands 

 of economy dictated. In Parts i and 2 there was excessive footnoting, and this has been 

 eliminated largely by the use of numbered references. Long museum and institutional 

 names have been replaced by the abbreviations listed in the Introduction for each Part. 



It is regrettable that a number of deep-sea groups — particularly the isospondylous 

 Alepocephalidae and Searsiidae and the iniomous Myctophidae and Neoscopelidae — 

 are represented in their respective positions by only interim accounts, inasmuch as the 

 detailed studies could not be completed for these volumes. The genus Cyclothone, though 

 treated in somewhat more detail than the groups just noted, also awaits further study. 

 It is hoped that these missing sections can be incorporated in the following Parts. 

 While these volumes were in preparation, a comprehensive study of the Searsiidae by 

 A. E. Parr has appeared in Dana Report No. 51, i960, to which the reader is referred 

 in lieu of a detailed account here. 



It is of interest to note that the contents of these three volumes were originally 

 intended for inclusion in Part 3 only, a commentary indicating quite clearly the impos- 

 sibility of predicting the ultimate total number of volumes for this series. Because of 

 the redistribution of the subject matter into three volumes, the sections on Bony Fishes 

 and Class Isospondyli in Part 3, prepared originally when only one volume was assumed, 

 now obtains for all three volumes. Of particular importance in these sections are the 

 Keys — to Orders in Bony Fishes' and to Suborders and Families in Class Isospondyli. 



