82 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OP FISHERIES. 



have been omitted in connection with the records, the general acknowledgments in 

 chapter iv being regarded as sufficient. In other cases, failure to mention the authority 

 for a determination implies that the specimen was identified by one of the present authors. 

 This is true of the great majority of readily recognizable species belonging to various 

 phyla. 



It must be borne in mind that the number of specimens recorded for a given 

 station represents, in many cases, the number saved and listed, rather than the number 

 actually brought in by the dredge. For many animals, especially minute ones, the 

 former figure may give no adequate idea of the relative abundance of the species in a 

 given dredge haul. 



The bibliographic references under each species will be found to be very Umited 

 in number, and to include, with a few exceptions, only those works which mention the 

 occurrence of this species within the limits of the region here under consideration. One 

 work has been regularly included, however, even in cases where no mention was 

 made of Woods Hole or vicinity by the authors. This is the "Report upon the 

 Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound" by Verrill and Smith (1873). Likewise, in 

 the list of mollusks, we have regularly included page references to Binney's edition of 

 Gould's "Report on the Invertebrata of Massachusetts," and for the fishes references 

 to Jordan and Evermann's "Fishes of North and Middle America." It has not been 

 thought worth while to cite the first description of each species nor even to refer 

 to any description or figure. To have included these would doubtless have added 

 considerably to the usefulness of this report, but we need only remind the reader that 

 the search for such few bibliographic citations as are here offered required many months 

 of thoroughly uninspiring labor. In many cases reference to original descriptions and 

 figures may be found in one or another of the works here cited. Bibliographic lists, 

 limited almost wholly to the works referred to in connection with the separate species, 

 have been appended to the zoological and botanical sections of the catalogue. 



In order to faciUtate the finding of a species which has been listed by a name unfa- 

 miliar to the reader, a certain number of synonyms have been included in connection 

 with the bibliographic references. Only those names are included, however, by which 

 the species in question has been designated in the various works relating to our local 

 fauna. The synonyms here listed are all included in the systematic index. This will 

 probably render possible the finding of a desired species in a large proportion of cases. 



As respects classification and nomenclature, we have found it expedient, and 

 indeed unavoidable, to follow within each group some one authority, this authority 

 being, in most cases, the same person who has been responsible for the identification 

 of our species. Only thus has it been possible to avoid a quite interminable examina- 

 tion of the literature on our part. This precedure has frequently led to our being 

 obHged to substitute quite unfamiliar names for ones long current among American 

 biologists, and to our listing under separate genera species which, to everyone but the 

 taxonomist, are scarcely distinguishable from one another as species. No one could 

 deplore more than we do the necessity for such changes, and this regret is the keener 

 because of the confidence we feel that many of these names are not the ones that will 

 ultimately stand. 



Several years' experience in the preparation of bur faunal catalogue has brought 

 home to us in a forcible way some of the most exasperating of the evils relating to 



