INTRODUCTION. 



THE object of this handbook is to place before the reader a 

 brief descriptive summary of the entire fish-fauna of the 

 British Islands. Within the limited space at disposal it 

 has been found impossible in certain instances to give more 

 than an enumeration of the various specific forms, though 

 in most such cases, as exemplified by the Cod-fish, 

 Herring, and Salmon tribes, compensation for this deficiency 

 is made in the corresponding handbooks published or 

 about to be published on the several subjects of "Food 

 Fishes," " Fish Culture," and " Distribution and Consump- 

 tion of Fish." In a similar manner all complete details 

 relating to the morphological structure and developmental 

 phenomena of fishes have been left in charge of the writers 

 engaged upon the treatises pertaining to " Fish Morpho- 

 logy" and the "Life History of Fishes," while all legis- 

 lative enactments and statistics concerning our home- 

 fisheries are appropriately relegated to the handbooks 

 entitled " The Law in relation to Fish and Fisheries," and 

 " The Fish Trade of the United Kingdom." Apart from 

 the several topics now enumerated, there remains to be 

 recorded a vast fund of information concerning the habits 

 of fish, their peculiar modes of locomotion, variations and 

 adaptations of form and colour, assumed during their 

 growth to the adult state, or adopted for the purpose of 



