400 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



Doctor Goode's power in organizing and coordinating practical 

 investigations was shown in his monumental work on the Ameri- 

 can fisheries for the Tenth Census in 1880. The preparation of 

 the record of the fisheries and associated aquatic industries was 

 placed in his hands, by Francis A. Walker, Superintendent of 

 the Census. Under Doctor Goode's direction skilled investigators 

 were sent to every part of the coast and inland waters of the coun- 

 try. A general survey of the aquatic resources, actual and possible, 

 of the United States was attempted, and statistics of every kind 

 were secured on a grand scale. His directions to field agents, still 

 unpublished, were models in their way, and no possible source of 

 information was neglected by him. The results of all these special 

 reports were received and condensed by Doctor Goode into seven 

 large quarto volumes, with a great number of plates. The first 

 section of the Natural History of Aquatic Animals was a contri- 

 bution of the greatest value. Although the information it gives 

 was obtained from many sources, through various hands, it was 

 so coordinated and unified that it forms a harmonious treatise, 

 while at the same time the individual helpers are fully recog- 

 nized. 



All these works, according to Doctor Goode, belong to Lamb's 

 category of "books which are not books." His expressed ambition 

 to write a book not of this kind, one that people would buy and 

 read, found actuality at last. In 1888, appeared his American 

 Fishes, a popular treatise on the game and food-fishes of North 

 America, a work without a rival because of its readableness, its 

 scientific accuracy, and the excellence of its text. The work is 

 notable for its quotations, which include almost all the bright 

 things which have been said about fishes by poets and anglers 

 and philosophers from the time of Aristotle to Izaak Walton and 

 Thoreau. In this book more than in any other Doctor Goode 

 shows himself a literary artist. The love of fine expression which 

 might have made a poet of him was developed rather in the collec- 

 tion of the bright words and charming verse of others than in the 

 production of poetry of his own. While limiting himself in this 

 volume to fragments of prose and verse in praise of fishes and 



