INTRODUCTION. 



BY A. NELSON CHENEY. 



THE wealth of fishes on the North American Continent 

 known as game fishes fishes taken for sport and for food 

 with rod and line is not equaled, nor is it even ap- 

 proached, by the fishes of any other of the grand divisions of the 

 earth. Of Salmon and Trout alone the chiefs of game fishes 

 there are, native and introduced, about thirty species, and 

 that is but a beginning of the list of fishes which abound in the 

 fresh and salt water of the United States and British Posses- 

 sions. This grand array of fishes has been classified, and each 

 has found its proper place in icthhyology. One or two men 

 were equal to the task of accomplishing this scientific work, but 

 no one or two men have attempted to give a thorough popular 

 description of these fishes, their habits and habitat, and the 

 manner of, and tools used in, taking them in a sportsmanlike 

 way; nor are there one or two men on the whole continent 

 qualified to do this work, and do it thoroughly. The coun- 

 try is too vast, and the waters too widely scattered, for any 

 one man to have become on intimate terms with all of our 

 fishes, and to have been brought into these intimate relations 

 by actual and personal experience with them. 



By mixing experience with the contents of text-books, a 

 fair but superficial knowledge may be gathered together of 

 the fishes of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf States and coasts; 

 but it cannot be a complete record of the life and habits of 

 the fishes such as would be acquired by a score of anglers, 

 widely separated, each treating of one or two fishes that he 



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