REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 175 
Smith’s chief fountain of information was Mitchill’’s monograph, 
‘The Fishes of New York described and arranged,” published in 1815 
in the Transactions of the Literary and Philosophical Society of 
New York. 
He evidently had, as a stand-by, John Stark’s ‘*‘ Elements of Natural 
History,” published at Edinburgh in 1828, in which the classification 
proposed by Cuvier in the first edition of the ‘‘ Régne Animal” (1817) 
was followed. This served Smith as a guide for the arrangement of 
his material. Although the second edition of the ‘‘ Régne Animal” 
(1829) had been translated and published in New York a couple of years 
before (1831), it was unknown to Smith. Another work he referred 
to as ‘“‘the Conversations Lexicon;” it was the ‘* Encyclopedia Ameri- 
cana” of those days, which had then been very recently published. 
For the illustrations, he had a work long ago forgotten, but which 
had a considerable circulation in its day. It was Strack’s ‘‘ Natur- 
geschichte in Bildern mit erliuterndem Text.” Of the fish part two 
editions had been published at Diisseldorf—one in 1819-1826 and the 
other in 1828-1834. This work was the source of most of the reduced 
and very poorly engraved woodcuts which accompany the text; three 
were borrowed from Mitchill’s ‘* Fishes of New York.” Such are the 
facts, but in his preface Smith makes no mention of Strack’s work 
and leads up to the supposition that his cuts were original. His words 
are, ‘‘ With respect to the engravings, they are far short, in many 
instances, of what was anticipated. Some of them are beautifully and 
accurately executed, but others are miserable caricatures. The artist 
was young and inexperienced, and when he would have willingly made 
“a second drawing the press could not be kept in waiting.” 
Iie has certainly told the truth in the acknowledgment that the 
engravings were ‘‘miserable caricatures.” They are generally very 
poor copies of the originals. For example, Strack’s figure of the fresh- 
water lamprey represented correctly seven lateral branchial foramina; 
Smith’s copy only five! A few examples of the many kinds of errors 
he committed may now be examined; to expose all would require a 
volume as large as the one noticed. 
Under the caption ‘‘ Gun. Scyiiram” three species are claimed for 
Massachusetts, the sea-dog Scylliwn canicula (p. 80); the Scyllium 
catulus (p. 81); and the dog-fish Squalus canis (p. 82). Now no species 
of the genus Scy/l/iwm has ever been obtained from the coast waters of 
Massachusetts, and the only sharks called sea-dog or dog-fish that could 
have been known to Smith were the picked dog-fish, Squalus acanthias, 
and the smooth hound, J/ustelus canis, which last was not named by him. 
Gray mullets or mugilids, as everyone here knows, are among the 
“most common of the shore fishes from the Woods Hole region south- 
ward, and, under the name Mugil albula, were well described by 
Mitchill in 1814, in New York, but Smith urges (p. 268), ‘* Notwithstand- 
ing the minute description there given we think there must be some 
