FISHES. 373 



Cetaceafrom the class of fishes to place them asmammiferous ani- 

 mals in his first class ; and the cartilaginous fishes of Ray were 

 placed in his order NANTES, in the class AMPHIBIA. Gmelin, 

 however, in his edition of the Systetna Naturce, transferred the 

 cartilaginous fishes to their proper place. Linnaeus, relying on 

 imperfect observation, had placed them among the Amphibia. 



It is not necessary to detail all the subsequent attempts at the 

 classification of fishes by Groonvius, Klein, Schceffer, Brunnich, 

 Scopoli, Bonaterre, and others, since either in themselves, or as mo- 

 difications of the systems proposed by Ray, Artedi,and Linnaeus, 

 they had little effect on the subsequent progress of ichthyology, 

 Among those who contributed to that progress, however, by ac- 

 curate representations of the animals, Mark Eliazar Bloch, a 

 Jewish physician at Berlin, deserves to be noticed. His Ich- 

 thyologie, ou Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, in six volumes 

 folio, was published in 1785-95, with 452 coloured plates, the 

 greater part of which are accurately drawn and described from 

 nature, and the facts connected with the history, specific dif- 

 ferences, and uses of fishes, detailed with equal accuracy, have 

 furnished most subsequent writers with a storehouse of informa- 

 tion on the subject of the European species. The original edi- 

 tion being difficult to be procured, a small copy in ten volumes 

 18mo was published at Paris in 1801. 



The next systematic writer in this department of Zoology to 

 be noticed, is the Count de Lacepede. His Natural History 

 of Fishes, a continuation of the work of Buffon, appeared in 

 five volumes quarto from 1798 to 1803. The arrangement 

 adopted in this work, the most extensive which had hither- 

 to appeared, is partly adopted from Ray and Linnaeus, and 

 partly his own. He divides the fishes into two subclasses 

 the Cartilaginous and Osseous, and each of these subclas- 

 ses is formed of four divisions, taken from the structure 

 or absence of the operculum and the branchial membrane 

 Thus thejirst division of the Cartilaginous Fishes is formed of 

 those which have neither operculum nor branchial membrane ; 

 the second of those which have the operculum ; the third of those 

 which have a branchial operculum and no membrane ; and the 

 fourth of those which have both an operculum and branchial mem- 

 brane. The Osseous Fishes follow an inverse order, that is, the 



