CHAPTER XLVII 

 INTRODUCTION TO THE CLASS OF FISHES 



THE study of fishes is called ich-thy-ol'o-gy. 

 So great is the number of species that the mass is, 

 at first thought, fairly bewildering. During the last twenty 

 years the researches of the men who devote their lives to the 

 study of fishes (called ichthyologists) have brought to light 

 hundreds of new forms. 



The inhabitants of the waters of North America, alone, 

 form a great multitude. Of the fishes found north of Panama, 

 marine and inland, the "Descriptive Catalogue" of Drs. Jor- 

 dan and Evermann, Part IV, completed in 1900, enumerates 

 the following groups, species and subspecies as recognized 

 by those authors: 



Orders of Fishes 30 



Families 225 



Genera 1,113 



Species 3,263 



The four volumes comprising the work mentioned above 

 make a pile nine-and-a-half inches high, and contain 3,313 

 fine-print pages of text, and 392 plates. The "Systematic 

 Arrangement," or table of contents, is wholly in Latin, and 

 fills 95 closely printed pages. The work has been carefully 



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