334 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 506. 



long been referred to their proper genera. 

 But all the labor was lost, so far as Storer 

 was concerned. Four species were referred 

 by him to the genus. Only one (obscurus) 

 has the characters assigned in the diagnosis. 

 One (griseus) is an Odontaspis, another 

 (vulpes) an Alopias, and the fourth {at- 

 woodi) is the great white shark {Carcharo- 

 don carcharias). It will be thus seen that 

 his four species of Carcharias belong to 

 four families of Miiller and Henle and 

 most modern systematists. 



If we examine his descriptions we too 

 often find that while they fill every requi- 

 site as to length, there is too much perfunc- 

 tory verbiage and too little precision. For 

 example, the 'form' of the striped bass as 

 well as of the common mackerel is said to 

 be ' cylindrical, ' while the Spanish mackerel 

 {Scoinber dekayi or colias) is claimed to 

 have the 'body elongated.' Now, there is 

 really no difi'erenee in form between the 

 two mackerels and that form is as nearly 

 fusiform as any fish can have. Any one 

 who knows what a cylinder is would be so 

 misled by the use of the word that he would 

 be precluded from identifying the striped 

 bass from the description, if he relied on 

 it. The mackerels are certainly elongated, 

 but so is an eel and so also is a hairtail; 

 it is evident, therefore, that the unqualified 

 adjective is altogether too vague and mean- 

 ingless. These examples of the want of 

 precision and misuse of terms must suffice. 



Another feature which may excite the 

 surprise of the new student is the meagre- 

 ness of the information respecting habits 

 of species. There are some statistical data 

 concerning the mackerel, herring and cod, 

 some observations on the habits of the sun- 

 fish, toad-fish and trout and briefer refer- 

 ences to others, but the parental care ex- 

 ercised by the sticklebacks and catfishes 

 and the peculiarities of others, are not even 

 alluded to. Comparatvely little was known 

 in those days of such matters, it is true, 



but information about the characteristics 

 in question was already existent in the li1> 

 erature. 



The best part of the work is the collec- 

 tion of plates. These are really for the 

 most part excellent and among the best 

 that have ever been published. Most of 

 them were prepared by A. Sonrel, who 

 had been trained for such work by Agassiz. 

 But the want of supervision was occasion- 

 ally evident even here. For example, 

 adopting the fashion then prevalent, scales 

 from the back and lateral line were illus- 

 trated for almost every scaly fish. Now, 

 the most characteristic feature of the scales 

 of the sparoid fishes is the divergence of 

 the strife across the field above and below 

 and their intersection of the margins. Son- 

 rel had represented the fine concentric 

 striffi of the scales of the early families 

 correctly, but, in place of well-marked 

 strife for the sparids, he gave meaningless 

 dots (pi. 10, f. 2, 3, 5, 6) ; apparently he 

 had perceived something anomalous to him 

 in the sparoid scales, but was afraid to rep- 

 resent what he saw and adopted the device 

 of obscurity and ambiguity expressed in 

 punctulation. 



Another ease of bad iconography was 

 exhibited in the figure of the so-called 

 Blennius serpentinus (pi. 17, f. 1.) Storer 

 conceived for this fish a very deeply divided 

 dorsal whose parts were ' connected by a 

 membrane' (p. 91). Probably the fin had 

 been injured ; in a perfect specimen the fin 

 is uninterrupted. The artist may have 

 been infiueneed by the ichthyologist; pos- 

 sibly the ichthyologist may have been mis- 

 led by the artist; anyway, the representa- 

 tion of the fin accords with the descrip- 

 tion and not with nature. 



It will be evident that all the criticisms 

 that have been passed on the 'History' are 

 those that might have been made at the 

 time the parts were published. In the 

 allocation of some of the genera and species 



