August 15, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



249 



successors could content themselves with 

 filling up those details for which their mas- 

 ter had no leisure. Indefatigable in exam- 

 ining all the external and internal charac- 

 ters of the fishes of a rich collection, he 

 ascertained the natural affinities of the 

 infinite variety of fishes, and accurately 

 defined the divisions, orders, families and 

 genera of the class, as they appear in the 

 various editions of the ' Regne Animal. ' 

 His industry equaled his genius; he 

 opened connections with almost every ac- 

 cessible part of the globe ; not only French 

 travelers and naturalists, but also Ger- 

 mans, Englishmen, Americans, rivaled one 

 another to assist him with collections; and 

 for many years the Museum of the Jardin 

 des Plantes was the center where all ichthy- 

 ological treasures were deposited. Thus 

 Cuvier brought together a collection the 

 like of which had never been seen before, 

 and which, as it contains all the materials 

 on which his labors were based, must still 

 be considered to be the most important. 



The greatest contributions of Cuvier to 

 ichthyology are contained in the great 

 ' Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, ' the joint 

 work of Cuvier and his pupil and successor, 

 Achille Valenciennes. Of this work 22 vol- 

 umes were published, from 1828 to 1847, 

 containing 4,514 nominal species, the larger 

 number of volumes appearing after the 

 death of Cuvier (1832), the work closing, 

 not quite complete, with the death of Val- 

 enciennes in 1848. 



This is a most masterly work, still in- 

 dispensable to the student of fishes. Its 

 descriptions are generally exact, its state- 

 ments correct, its plates accurate and its 

 judgments trustworthy. But with all this 

 it is very unequal. Many of the species are 

 treated very lightly by Cuvier; many of 

 the descriptions of Valenciennes are very 

 mechanical, as though the author had 

 grown weary of the endless process, ' a fail- 

 ing commonly observed among zoologists 



when attention to descrii^tive details be- 

 comes to them a tedious task.' As Giin- 

 ther observes, the number of nominal spe- 

 cies is almost doubled because the authors 

 neglected to give pz-oper attention to the 

 changes in different species due to age and 

 sex. 



After the death of Valenciennes (1848) 

 Dr. Auguste Dumeril (son of Constant 

 Dumeril) began a continuation of this work, 

 publishing two volumes (1865-1870) cover- 

 ing sharks, ganoids and other fishes not 

 treated by Cuvier and Valenciennes. The 

 death of Dumeril left the great catalogue 

 still incomplete. Dumeril's work is useful 

 and carefully done, but his excessive trust 

 in slight differences has filled his book with 

 nominal species. Thus among the ganoid 

 fishes he recog-nizes 135 species, the actual 

 number being not far from 40. 



We may anticipate the sequence of time 

 by here referring to the remaining at- 

 tempts at a record of all the fishes in the 

 world. Dr. Albert C. L. G. Giinther, a 

 German naturalist resident in London, and 

 long the Keeper of the British Museum, 

 published in eight volumes the ' Catalogue 

 of the Fishes of the British Museum, ' from 

 1859 to 1870. In this monumental work, 

 the one work most essential to all system- 

 atic study of fishes, 6,843 species are 

 described and 1,682 doubtful species are 

 mentioned. The book is a tremendous ex- 

 ample of patient industry. Its gTeat mer- 

 its are at once apparent, and those of us 

 engaged in the same line of study may pass 

 by its faults with the same leniency which 

 we may hope that posterity may bestow on 

 ours. 



The publication of this work gave a re- 

 markable stimulus to the study of fishes. 

 The number of known species had been 

 raised from 9,000 to about 12,000, and some 

 hundreds of species even accepted by the 

 conservatism of Giinther have been erased 

 from the system. 



