The Smithsonian Institution 



to the " Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, "and other periodicals. The species and genera 

 new to science were very numerous ; and the faunal char- 

 acteristics of regions little or not at all known before were 

 revealed in considerable detail. 



Scarcely any long stretch of coast in the entire world was 

 so little known, from a zoological standpoint, as was that ex- 

 tending from Alaska to Mexico. Especially true was this 

 for ichthyology. A number of the fishes of northern and 

 Russian America had been described by Tilesius, Pallas, and 

 Richardson ; but only about a dozen species had been authen- 

 ticated from the great stretch of coast just mentioned. A 

 few species had been described in 1836 by Sir John Richard- 

 son, a single one (Chimcera colliei} in 1839 by Lay and Ben- 

 nett, and another (Syngnathus californiensis} in 1845 by 

 Storer. The literature otherwise was confined to brief 

 and insufficient indications, too unreliable or too meager for 

 positive identification. In 1853 and 1854, Louis Agassiz in- 

 troduced to public notice, with much eclat, the remarkable 

 viviparous perch-like fishes inhabiting the California coast, 

 which he called Holconoti or Embiotocoidae. These papers 

 and others by Gibbons slightly anticipated the publication of 

 the results of the explorations for the Pacific route. But in 

 1854 and following years, Charles Girard contributed descrip- 

 tions of the many new genera and species of fishes obtained 

 by the United States expeditions, and in 1859 a final report 

 embracing all the forms known from the Pacific coast of the 

 United States was issued. One hundred and forty-eight 

 nominal species of salt-water fishes were described, and most 

 of them illustrated ; and a fair idea was thus given of the pis- 

 cine fauna of that previously neglected coast. This mono- 

 graph of Girard's was included in the tenth volume of the 

 Pacific Railroad Reports. 



