82 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
have been omitted in connection with the records, the general acknowledgments in 
chapter Iv being regarded as sufficient. In other cases, failure to mention the authority 
for a determination implies that the specimen was identified by one of the present authors. 
This is true of the great majority of readily recognizable species belonging to various 
phyla. 
It must be borne in mind that the number of specimens recorded for a given 
station represents, in many cases, the number saved and listed, rather than the number 
actually brought in by the dredge. For many animals, especially minute ones, the 
former figure may give no adequate idea of the relative abundance of the species in a 
given dredge haul. 
The bibliographic references under each species will be found to be very limited 
in number, and to include, with a few exceptions, only those works which mention the 
occurrence of this species within the limits of the region here under consideration. One 
work has been regularly included, however, even in cases where no mention was 
made of Woods Hole or vicinity by the authors. This is the ‘Report upon the 
Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound”’ by Verrill and Smith (1873). Likewise, in 
the list of mollusks, we have regularly included page references to Binney’s edition of 
Gould’s ‘‘Report on the Invertebrata of Massachusetts,’ and for the fishes references 
to Jordan and Evermann’s “‘ Fishes of North and Middle America.’”’ It has not been 
thought worth while to cite the first description of each species nor even to refer 
to any description or figure. To have included these would doubtless have added 
considerably to the usefulness of this report, but we need only remind the reader that 
the search for such few bibliographic citations as are here offered required many months 
of thoroughly uninspiring labor. In many cases reference to original descriptions and 
figures may be found in one or another of the works here cited. Bibliographic lists, 
limited almost wholly to the works referred to in connection with the separate species, 
have been appended to the zoological and botanical sections of the catalogue. 
In order to facilitate the finding of a species which has been listed by a name unfa- 
wniliar to the reader, a certain number of synonyms have been included in connection 
with the bibliographic references. Only those names are included, however, by which 
the species in question has been designated in the various works relating to our local 
fauna. The synonyms here listed are all included in the systematic index. This will 
probably render possible the finding of a desired species in a large proportion of cases. 
As respects classification and nomenclature, we have found it expedient, and 
indeed unavoidable, to follow within each group some one authority, this authority 
being, in most cases, the same person who has been responsible for the identification 
of our species. Only thus has it been possible to avoid a quite interminable examina- 
tion of the literature on our part. This precedure has frequently led to our being 
obliged to substitute quite unfamiliar names for ones long current among American 
biologists, and to our listing under separate genera species which, to everyone but the 
taxonomist, are scarcely distinguishable from one another as species. No one could 
deplore more than we do the necessity for such changes, and this regret is the keener 
because of the confidence we feel that many of these names are not the ones that will 
ultimately stand. 
Several years’ experience in the preparation of our faunal catalogue has brought 
home to us in a forcible way some of the most exasperating of the evils relating to 
