KEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF ' FISH AND FISHERIES. XLI 



• gefcher with some account of improved methods of curing fish for the 

 market as yet unknown in the United States. 



In addition to a list of the fishes found at Wood's Hole, amounting to 

 the large number of 116 species, I give a complete list of all the fishes 

 known to occur on the eastern coast of North America, as prepared 

 and furnished by Professor Theodore Gill. I am collecting materials for 

 full descriptions and biographies of these species, to be published here- 

 after, with appropriate figures, should such a work be called for. 



The account of the natural history of the south shore of New Ensrlaud 

 is rendered much more complete by the memoir of Professors Verrill 

 and Smith on the marine invertebrates, with its excellent illustrations, 

 all executed in relief by the method of Jewett & Co., of Bufijilo. The 

 list of the algae, by Dr. Farlow, will also furnish an important indica- 

 tion in reference to the distribution of this group of plants. 



An accompanying map of the south shore of Massachusetts and Rhode 

 Island is intended to show more particularly the distribution of animal 

 life — the fish-food — along the coast by indication of the results of sound- 

 ings, dredgings, and temperature observations, made by Professor Ver- 

 rill and myself during the season of 1871. On this same map is recorded 

 likewise the position of all the traps and pounds in use in 1871, as far as 

 I could ascertain their situation. There is also a separate diagram of the 

 traps at Seaconnet, where are taken, as is said, nearly nine-tenths of 

 all the fish caught by fixed apparatus in Rhode Island. I have also 

 given a diagram of the weirs on Cape Cod Bay, as furnished by Captain 

 Crowell. 



SPENCER F. BAIRD, 



Commissioner. 



Smithsonian Institution, Becemher 2, 1872. 

 S. Mis. 61 IV 



