REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 181 
the eulogist and that now to be presented, it must be remembered that 
the former was hampered by the demands of a memorial celebration, 
while on the present occasion only the facts need be considered. 
In the sixth decade of the past century the classification proposed 
for the fishes by Cuvier, in 1829, in the second edition of the ‘*Régne 
Animal,” was still regnant. Naturally, then, Storer adopted it fer his 
History, as he had previously for his Report. He added diagnoses of 
the families which were in almost all cases translations of the essential 
characteristics assigned to them by Cuvier. In the author’s nomen- 
clature he was ‘‘ guided, as far as possible, by the principle which 
would give the credit of a species to the author who first placed if 
under its appropriate genus. This plan,” he truly added, he ‘‘ was 
fed to understand is being adopted by our most eminent naturalists.” 
For a time such was the case. 
The work was and is of such importance that some analysis may be 
welcome. 
As long as the writer had a guide to follow his faults of taxonomy 
were mainly those of his guides, but he had the fortune, good or bad, 
to obtain specimens of types unknown to the authors whose views he 
followed, and then he had to determine their affinities as best he might. 
The result by no means did credit to his perspicacity. Among these 
types were the genera Loleosoma and Cryptacanthodes. Boleosome 
had been quite correctly referred by Dekay to the family of Percide, 
and is in fact a perch in miniature. Yet Storer referred it to the 
‘*Triglide,” between Acanthocottus and Aspidophorus (Aspidopho- 
rotdes), in spite of the fact that he declared (after Cuvier) that ‘* their 
general character consists in having the suborbital bone more or less 
extended over the cheek and articulated behind with the preopercu- 
lum.” Why he should have referred to such a family a genus with 
the suborbitals reduced to such an extent that they had been said to be 
absent is a mystery which he made no attempt to explain. 
Cryptacaunthodes was first named by Storer in 1839. It is an elon- 
gated naked fish without any enlarged suborbital bones and entirely 
unlike any recognized triglid. On the other hand, it has many charac- 
ters in common with genera of the family of ‘*‘ Gobide ” (as he called it), 
and in accordance with his own definition he should have referred it to 
that family. In fact the genus is the type of a peculiar family nearly 
related to that of the gunnells. 
The same ineptitude for the appreciation of characters or form is 
manifest in the treatment of species which he actually referred to the 
family ‘‘Gobide.” To the genus Blennius was relegated a species 
named Dlennius serpentinus, and to the very closely related genus 
Pholis wasassigned another species named Pholis subbifurcatus. Now 
the true species of Blennius and Pholis have a very characteristic phys- 
iognomy, and only differ from each other in the fact that the former 
