84 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



nivorous demand, but its value is uncertain. "X" represents both its quantity 

 and quality. An attempt to mention every writer of merit who has scratched 

 his name with a fishbone on the illusive sand would make one tired; yet there is 

 an indefatigable collector, Professor G. Brown Goodfe, the well-known chief of 

 the U. S. National Museum, who has been compiling a bibliography of American 

 ichthyology for the past ten years (!) and, although the product increases faster 

 than he can garner, he hopes some day to corral the entire lot. His collocation 

 will bring out prominently the names of noteworthy pioneers who are inseparable 

 from early efforts, like Seth Green, Mather, Milner, Ainsworth, Hessel, Barnet 

 Phillips, S. C. Clarke, Redding, Atkins, Brackett, Hudson, and a host of others, 

 as well as the busy and more enlightened systematic workers of the present day 

 like Bean, McDonald, Bendire, Earll, Ingersoll, Allen, True, et al. to the end of 

 the long and distinguished list. 



"Zoology of the Northwest" (1878), prepared by Lieut. Wheeler, is the title 

 of the first of those ponderous volumes prepared under the auspices of the gov- 

 ernment, and now being issued from year to year, which are to render the labor 

 of the future reviewer a pleasing task. It is an illustrated quarto, covering 

 ground in part which had been imperfectly investigated by Dr. Suckley in 1855. 

 Gill's "Bibliography of Fishes" (1882), and his "Arrangement of Fishes" (1883) 

 are scientifically important, and so is Jordan and Gilbert's "Synopsis of the 

 Fishes of North America," which gives the nomenclature and descriptions of all 

 known species of fishes north of the boundary between the United States and 

 Mexico. It has a compass of 1,018 pages, and describes 23 orders, 172 families, 

 487 genera, 1,340 species, and over two thousand varieties of American fishes. 

 Justly collossal, it stands like a mighty monolith at the very vestibule of the 

 majestic Temple of Ichthus which is gradually taking form and dimension 

 through the combined efforts of trained artificers and master workmen operating 

 under the skillful direction of U. S. Fish Commissioner Baird. 



This book of Jordan's is illustrative of a new era. It forms a preliminary 

 part of the great cumulative work which it foreshadows and may perpetuate, 

 and of which such elaborations as Goode's "Fishing Industries of the United 

 States," illustrated with hundreds of plates, and the pioneer merely of a forth- 

 coming series, and the annual "Bulletins of the U. S. Fishery Commission," and 

 Baird's "Pacific Railroad Reports" and the "Fishes of the Eastern Coast of the 

 United States from Greenland to Georgia," already stand out in conspicious pro- 

 portions. Henceforth, the philology of angling is relegated to the poets, of whom 

 the venerable Isaac McLellan, now living, and still singing at the age of eighty- 

 three, is almost the sole American representative. He and "Nessmuk" may 

 chant their "Forest Runes" together in the porch of the Temple, and dillettante 

 authors hang their garlands on the horns of its high altar, but science will 

 henceforth be the reigning god and all the ichthic offerings be made to him 

 alone. Knowledge is everything. No angler may catch a fish without a Latin 

 name, and all the arts, appliances, and methods of fishing will be contrived to 

 that end. Nature and science will plod perpetually hand in hand over the classic 

 boulevard, pari passu, trained to equal steps, while high upon the architrave, 

 over the porch, appears in bold relief the cabalistic legend, alike suggestive of 

 the impulse and incentive. Pisces in hoc signo vinces. 



A continuation of the angling bibliography may here appropriately follow, 

 concluding what has been begun. 



