INTRODUCTION. Ixix 



The systematic works ai-e so well known, and our space so limited, that we shall 

 merely enumerate the names of our chief zoological authors. In the study of mam- 

 mals the works of Audubon and his predecessors, already named, and of Thomas Jef- 

 ferson, T. Say, J. Bachmann, G. Ord, S. F. Baird, T. Gill, Harrison Allen, J. A. Allen, 

 E. D. Cope, Elliott Coues, J. Y. Scamraon, B. G. Wilder, C. H. Merriam, and W. S. 

 Barnard, should be mentioned, with the paleontological essays of R. Harlan, J. C. 

 Warren, J. Leidy, E. D. Cope, and O. C. Marsh, together with Godman's Rambles of 

 a Naturalist, L. H. Morgan's work on the beaver, Merriam's on the Mammals of the 

 Adirondacks, and physiological essays by J. Wyman, S. Weir Mitchell, J. C. Dalton, 

 and others. 



The ornithological works of Wilson, Bonaparte, Audubon, Nuttall, Baird, Cassin, 

 and Coues, the more recent great work of Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, Cones' Key 

 to the North American Birds, Birds of the Northwest, and Birds of the Colorado 

 Valley, and the many descri])tive and biological papers of other authors, such as T. 

 M. Brewer, Ord, J. P. Giraud, J. K. Townsend, A. L. Heerman, G. N. Lawrence, D. 

 G. Elliott, H. W. Gambel, .J. Xanthus, L. Stejneger, H. W. Henshaw, H. Byrant, S. 

 Cabot, T. M. Trippc, J. A. Allen, C. H. Merriam, W. H. Brewster, and others, with 

 the papers on distribution by Baird, A. E. Verrill, J. A. Allen, and R. Ridgway, 

 together with those on fossil birds by Marsh, are all worthy of comparison with the 

 best European works and papers. 



The reptiles and am]>hibians have been described by Harlan, J. E. Holbrook, T. 

 Say, J. Green, Baird, C. Girard, S. Garman, E. Hallowell, L. R. Gibbes, C. A. Lesueur, 

 J. L. Le Conte, L. Agassiz, and Cope, and an entire assemblage of forms in the west- 

 ern cretaceous and tertiary formations has been discovered by Leidy, Marsh, and 

 Cope. The anatomy of the nervous system of liana jnjyiens, by Jeffries Wyman, is 

 a classic, as are the researches of S. Weir Mitchell npon the venom of the rattlesnake, 

 and the researches on the anatomy and physiology of respiration in the Chelonia, by 

 S. Weir Mitchell and G. R. Morehouse. 



The fishes of North America have been worked up by S. L. Mitchell, Lesueur, C. 

 S. Rafinesque, D. H. Storer, J. E. DeJcay, Holbrook, Agassiz, Girard, J. P. Kirtland, J. 

 C. Brcvoort, Wyman, Baird, Gill, Cope, W. O. Ayres, F. W. Putnam, T. G. Tell- 

 kampf, D. S. Jordan, H. C. Yarrow, C. C. Abbott, G. B. Goode, R. Bliss, S. W. Gar- 

 man, W. N. Lockington, C. H. Gilbert, J. H. Swaim, and others ; while the fossil 

 forms have been described by J. H. and W. C. Redfield, Leidy, R. W. Gibbes, J. S. 

 Newberry, Cope, O. St. John, E. W. Claypole, and others, and several s])ecies of 

 Tunicata have been described by C. A. Lesueur, Tellkampf, Louis and A. Agassiz, 

 Verrill, and Packard. 



In entomology the writings of Say, the two Le Contes, F. E. Melsheimcr, N. 

 Hentz, T. W. Harris, S. S. Haldeman, R. von Osten Sacken, B. Clemens, J. D. Dana, 

 G. H. Horn, S. H. Scudder, P. R. Uhler, H. Hagen, B. D.^Walsh, A. S. Packard, A. R. 

 Grote, W. II. Edwards, Henry Edwards, C. H. Fernald, H. C. Wood, A. Fitch, C. V. 

 Riley, E. Norton, J. H. Emerton, C. Thomas, S. W. Williston, R. H. Stretch, H. 

 Strecker, J. B. Smith, J. H. Comstock, L. 0. Howard, E. T. Cresson, and others, are in 

 most cases quite voluminous, though mostly descriptive, while the fossil forms have 

 been described by Scudder, Dana, Meek and Worthen, S. I. Smith, and O. Harger. 

 Their anatomy and histology has been studied by Leidy, Scudder, Packard, G. Dim- 

 mock, E. Burgess, C. S. Minot, and G. Macloskie. 



The great work of Dana on the Crustacea of the United States Exploring Expe- 



