PREFACE. 



it had received the Linnean stamp of authority. One hundred and twenty spe- 

 cies are enumerated, of which thirty only are accompanied with detailed descrip- 

 tions. The celebrated ichthyologist Bloch added a few notes to this memoir.* 



Bosc, and a few other naturalists, had communicated to Lacepede some isolated 

 species after this period ; and Dr. Peck had described, in the Transactions of the 

 American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston, a few more ; but, with these 

 exceptions, our knowledge on this subject remained nearly stationar}' until 1814, 

 when Dr. Mitchill j)ublished a small tract, which may be said to have given a 

 new impulse to the study of American ichthyology. It contains original and 

 detailed descriptions of forty-nine species, with a simple catalogue of twenty-one 

 more. On the titlepage of this little tract, he states that " a very considerable 

 number of these beginnings of an attempt are not even named in the present list, 

 because they have not come to hand during the few weeks that have elapsed 

 since its commencement." It does not, however, ajipear to have attracted much 

 attention abroad, and is only cited in the latter volumes of the great work on 

 Fishes of Cuvier and Valenciennes. About the same period he published in the 

 American Medical and Philosophical Register, conducted by Drs. Hosack and 

 Francis, a paper on the Cod-fishes of New- York, in which he enumerates eleven 

 species and six varieties of that family. In December of the same year, he read 

 before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New- York, a paper entitled 

 " The Fishes of New- York, described and arranged ;" which was shortly after 

 published in the Transactions of that Society. In this paper, which at that 

 period was the most important and valuable essay on the fishes of the United 

 States, he describes (deducting the foreign and doubtful fishes) one hundred and 

 thirty-four species, illustrated by six copperplates, containing seventy small but 

 quite recognizable figures.f In February, 1818, he published a supplement to 



» SchcppfT appears to liave liccn a man of vari.^il attainments, and lias left several works relating to the natviral history 

 of this country, the most important of which is his Historia Tcstudinum. lie is the autlior of two volumes of travels in 

 the United States, and of a work on its geology, under the following titles ; 



1. Reise durch einigc dermittlern und sudlichcn vereinigten Nord Americanischer Slaaten. 2 vols. 8vo. Erlangen, 17SS. 



2. Beylrage snr mineralogischen kentniss dcr ostlichen theil von Nord America und seiner gebtirge. pp. 194. Eilaiigeii, ITS". 

 Neither of these, we believe, have been translated into our language. 



t This memoir is spoken of by Cuvier in tlie following terms: " Thus there had scarcely hecn in the ci^'hteenth century 

 any thing on the lishes of North America, except the work of C'atesby, and what had been inserted by Pennant in his 

 Arctic Zoology. But in 1815, Dr. Mitchill, a learned physician of New-York, gave a history of the lishes in the vicinity 

 of that city, in which he described one hundred ond forty-nine species, distributed after the system of Liinicus, with well 



