Bibliographical Notices. 493 



served specimens. Convinced by these comparisons of the great 

 scientific value of the materials in his hands, Hr. Godeffroy resolved 

 to spare neither trouble nor expense in rendering it generally ser- 

 viceable to ichthyologists ; and accordingly Dr. Giinther undertook 

 to determine the species and edit the work, whilst the services of 

 Mr. Ford were secured to reproduce the drawings. 



Like many other xindertakings of the same kind, this also took a 

 wider scope as it "advanced. It was found that Mr. Garrett's series 

 of drawings included so large a proportion of the known fishes .of 

 the South Sea, and that the specimens from the same region accu- 

 mulated in the British Museum and the Museum Godeffroy furnished 

 such abundant materials for the task, that the temptation became 

 irresistible to a naturalist like Dr. Giinther to render his work a 

 complete account of all the species belonging to the fauna which he 

 was called upon to illustrate. Accordingly he decided to give an 

 enumeration with descriptions of all the known fishes of the South 

 Sea, including under that denomination the sea containing the 

 Polynesian and Micronesian groups of islands, but excluding the 

 Fiji Islands and the whole of Melanesia, where an Australian fauna 

 is distinctly recognizable. 



That we have dwelt so long on the origin and history of this 

 valuable work is due to two causes. In the first place its general 

 scope and bearing are best indicated by means of a recapitulation of 

 the circumstances which led to its production ; and, secondly, a 

 purely descriptive book of this kind gives but little opening either 

 for laudation or criticism. When completed it will form a faunistic 

 contribution of the greatest value, equalling or perhaps exceeding in 

 importance the author's previous labours of the same nature — his 

 ' Reptiles of British India ' and his ' Fishes of Zanzibar.' 



The part now before us (the first of ten) includes notices of about 

 forty-five species of Serranidse, five of which are described as new. 

 Five others — namely, a Serranus, a Mesoprion, an Ambassis, and two 

 species of Apogon (the last described from Godeffroyian specimens) — 

 appear to be peculiar to the Polynesian region ; of the rest, the 

 majority have a very wide distribution, many of them stretching 

 from the Red Sea to Polynesia; and some of these are also taken on 

 the coast of Australia, but none appear to be specially Australian 

 forms. On the other hand, eleven species (four of which belong to 

 Apogon) are inhabitants of the Indian archipelago and the seas to 

 the east of Asia. The most curious case of distant isolated distri- 

 bution is that of Aprion virescens, which has the Seychelles as its 

 sole recorded western habitat, but occurs also in the Society and 

 Sandwich Islands and at the Fijis. 



The only important change in a systematic point of view made 

 by Dr. Giinther in the present part is the establishment of a new 

 main section of Acanthopterygii Serraniformes by the division of his 

 old group Acanih. Perciformes. He states that in the Serraniformes 

 the vertebral column consists of only about twenty-four vertebrae, 

 of which ten usually belong to the trunk, and fourteen to the tail. 

 The number of vertebrae is much greater in the true Perciformes 



