THE FISHES OF KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE: A DISTRIBUTIONAL 

 CATALOGUE OF THE KNOWN SPECIES. 



By BARTON WARREN EVERMANN, A. M., Ph. D., 

 Director of the Museum of the California Academy of Sciences. 



INTRODUCTION. 



While engaged in studying the considerable collection of fishes obtained by the 

 writer in east Tennessee in 1893, in connection with investigations carried on in 

 that region for the United States Bureau of Fisheries (then United States Fish Com- 

 mission), it was necessary to consult all the available literature pertaining to the ich- 

 thyology not only of that region but of the entire Mississippi drainage. This naturally 

 led to the accumulation of a large number of notes and memoranda relating to the 

 fishes of the region, particularly' those of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. In 

 order that these data and the labor incident to their preparation may not be lost, it 

 seems worth while to assemble and put them in a form whereby they may be available 

 for others who may study the fishes of Kentucky and Termessee. It is believed they 

 will prove of particular value to those interested in questions of geographic distribution. 



With this thought in mind, an attempt has been made in the present paper to sum- 

 marize our knowledge of the fish faunas of the Tennessee and Cumberland River Basins 

 and of the other waters in the States of Kentucky and Tennessee. 



A brief historical resum6 of the systematic and faunistic work which has been 

 done on the fishes of this region is given. 



So far as the writer has been able to discover from an examination of available 

 literature, the first man to collect and study the fishes of Kentucky and Tennessee was 

 that enthusiastic, albeit somewhat eccentric naturalist, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. 



This indefatigable student of nature came to Lexington, Ky.,in 1818, where, through 

 the good offices of his friend John D. Clifford, he secured the professorship of botany 

 and natural history in Transylvania University, located at Lexington. 



Here, as Prof. Call has well said, Rafinesque "was in a veritable new world; the 

 plants and animals had never been either collected or studied ; the hand of the hushand- 

 man had not yet destroyed much of the primitive forest; untold wealth of natural 

 forms appealed to Rafinesque, the Nature-lover, as they have rarely appealed to any 

 man. To-day even, in the face of the check which specialization furnishes to scientific 

 investigators, few men could withstand this lavish display of new and unknown forms! 

 They were on every hand, in every glade and mead, in every brook and spring, the 

 creeks, the rivers, the very rocks themselves. Like a schoolboy, Rafinesque searched 

 and found, studied, described, drew, sent abroad, the wonderful forms in which he, 

 almost alone, now reveled." Rafinesque remained at Lexington eight years. In the 

 early fall of 1825, upon returning to Lexington from one of his long collecting trips, 

 Rafinesque found that, during his absence, his effects had been removed from his room 



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