The Three Secretaries 173 



into species and varieties. After this had been done, de- 

 scriptions and analytical keys were prepared and provisional 

 names were given to each. Last of all, the books were con- 

 sulted in order to determine which of them had already been 

 described and provided with names. Never in the history of 

 zoology has a continent been classified in a manner so free 

 from complications of previous discussion. 



He published little on the morphology and classification of 

 fishes. A few papers, in association with Girard, upon new 

 forms found in the fresh-waters of the Southwest, and a 

 report upon the fishes observed upon the coast of New Jersey 

 and Long Island during the summer of 1854, were early and 

 useful pieces of work, though not especially significant. 



After he became Commissioner of Fisheries his time was 

 so occupied that he was obliged to carry on his studies 

 through the agency of others. In his first annual report, 

 however, — that for 1871, — he discussed the life-histories of 

 two important economic species, the bluefish and the scup- 

 paug. These were the beginning of a new method in ich- 

 thyological work, and served as a model and guide for all the 

 more recent American students. These essays were life-his- 

 tories of the most comprehensive type. In them he discussed 

 geographical range, migrations, movements, habits of life, 

 phenomena of reproduction and growth, questions of food, 

 enemies, temperature, and all the manifold relationships of 

 each form to its environment. Then followed a discussion of 

 the relation of these fishes to man, the relative destructive- 

 ness of different methods of capture, and the effects of these 

 methods in the past. The evidence in regard to the diminu- 

 tion of numbers was critically examined, and the statistics for 

 the region, with which he was familiar, were treated in an ex- 

 haustive manner. A life-history equal to that of the bluefish. 

 then printed, has never been \vritten by any other naturalist. 

 12* 



