PREFACE, XIIl 
College my attention was naturally directed to these, the most striking fos- 
sils to be found in the vicinity. After obtaining by purchase good speci- 
mens of all the species to be had in the valley of the Connecticut, men 
were employed to make excavations in the fish beds at Boonton, N. J., and 
from that locality many hundreds were obtained in a good state of preser- 
vation. These, with those procured elsewhere, gave me much more and 
better material for study than had been accessible to any one else who had 
been interested in the subject. The accumulation of this new material made 
it apparent that our Triassic rocks contained some genera not before found 
there and a larger number of species than had before been described. In 
order to identify these I examined the collections made by the Messrs. Red- 
field, all of which were courteously placed at my service by Prof. O. C. 
Marsh, as were those in the American Museum of Natural History by Prof. 
R. P. Whitfield and those in the cabinet at Amherst College by Prof. B. K. 
Emerson. My first intention was simply to identify the species which had 
come into my possession, but I soon found that to do this satisfactorily all 
the literature of the subject and all accessible material, both old and new, 
must be passed in review. W-hen this had been done it seemed to me that 
the facts I had gathered would be a valuable contribution to American 
geology if they could be put into shape and published, and the following 
memoir is the result of an effort in that direction. 
Many circumstances have rendered my task a difficult one. I have en- 
deavored with sincere loyalty to my old friends W. C. and J. H. Redfield, 
father and son, to secure to them as far as possible the fruit of their study 
of our Triassic fishes; but, from the limited amount and the imperfect pres- 
ervation of the material in their hands and the brevity of their descriptions 
it has not always been possible to identify and accurately define their spe- 
cies. Besides this, many of the specimens which served as their types were 
burned with the other collections of the New York Lyceum of Natural 
History, and of the specimens remaining in the Redfield collection the 
ereater part are without other labels than numbers to which no correspond- 
ing catalogue has been discovered. For these reasons I feel that in regard 
to specific’ distinctions my work is imperfect and is liable to modification 
with the gradual accumulaticn of more and better material. I have 
