221 
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 
An Introduction to the Study of Fishes. By Avperr C. L. 
Ginruer, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., Keeper of the Zoological 
Department in the British Museum. 8vo, pp. 706, with 
numerous illustrations. Edinburgh: Black. 1880. 
Or the many hundred volumes which have been published in 
English on Fish and Fishing, it is singular how very few treat of 
Ichthyology, in the strict sense of the term, that is to say, the 
internal and external structure of fishes; their mode of life, and 
their distribution in space and time. Some idea of the number 
of such treatises may be obtained by a glance at the catalogues 
of the literature of the subject which have from time to time 
appeared; notably Sir Henry Ellis’s Catalogue published in 
the ‘British Bibliography,’ and reprinted (though without 
acknowledgment) in the Supplement to Daniel’s ‘ Rural Sports,’ 
Pickering’s ‘ Bibliographia Piscatoria, and the Catalogues of 
Messrs. Russell Smith (1856) and Westwood (1857). Incomplete 
as these are, they nevertheless serve to indicate the nature of the 
books on Fishes which have been put forth by English writers 
since the appearance of the earliest ‘ Treatyse of fysshynge wyth 
an angle,’ in 1496. With but few exceptions, these works for the 
most part relate to the various methods and devices for capturing 
fish, with indications, more or less brief, of the situations in 
which they may be found. Now and again, in such works as 
those of Izaak Walton and Sir Humphrey Davy, we find some 
excellent remarks on the habits of fish, evidently written from 
personal observation ; while the more scientific volumes of Yarrell 
‘and Couch furnish valuable materials for a natural history of the 
Fishes of the British Islands. But none of these writers have 
gone far enough; the limits of their respective works are too 
narrow; the reader gains from them no knowledge of the elements 
of Ichthyology, no idea of general classification, and is left in 
ignorance on many points of interest and importance, such as 
the internal structure, the organs of respiration, circulation, 
nutrition, and reproduction, the organs of sense, and the 
geographical distribution of fishes. 
