386 Mr YarrelFs History of British Fishes. 



science is connected with the inhabitants of the British waters. 

 Linnaeus and his pupils, and Artedi, were much indebted for their 

 information to the naturalists of this country. But it is not, we be- 

 lieve, until the appearance of the British Zoology of Pennant in 

 1769, that we can lay claim to any work devoted to the history of 

 our native fishes. Subsequent to this, we have again only partial 

 accounts and treatises scattered in the periodicals of the time, and 

 in the works of Banks and Solander, Forster, Gmelin, and Shaw. 

 But in comparative anatomy, the age was more fertile, for Cheselden, 

 the Hunters, and Monro secundus, gave to the world the results of 

 their researches, which have kept their place to the present day. 



In the conclusion of the eighteenth and beginning of the nine- 

 teenth centuries, it was evident that the science was slowly and 

 quietly gaining ground. Berkenhout's last edition contained a " Sy- 

 nopsis of the Natural History of Great Britain and Ireland ;" Shaw 

 was occupied with the Ichthyological part of his General Zoology ; 

 Low described several northern fishes in his Fauna Orcadensis ; 

 Montagu read some interesting papers to the Wernerian Society ; 

 and an industrious naturalist commenced and completed a work of 

 much merit. This work of Donovan, begun in 1802, was published 

 in numbers, and forms five 8vo volumes, with coloured plates of 120 

 species. Many of the figures are remarkably good, and the descrip- 

 tions are often accurate, but the price was much beyond the reach of 

 the general purchaser, and this excluded it from the library of the 

 student. Turton's Compendium of our Fauna, indeed, might easily 

 have found a place there, had not the very unattractive appearance 

 of his little volume, and the dry nakedness of the compilation, and 

 its inherent want of value, been as effectual to its non-admission as 

 a prohibitory price. Fleming's British Animals in 1828, gave the 

 next most complete synoptical arrangement of our fishes;* after 

 which our progress was marked by many excellent papers in our 

 periodicals and transactions, in which Montagu continued to contri- 

 bute, and the names of Couch, Fleming, Neill, Jardine, and our au- 

 thor, bore prominent parts ; discoveries and additions were making 

 rapidly, and a work of moderate size and moderate price, giving a 

 connected view of the latest acquisitions, with figures and descrip- 



* We should not neglect here the important attempt made in the same year 

 by our learned countrywoman, Mrs Bowdich, to illustrate the fresh water fishes 

 of Britain by drawings and descriptions. The manual labour required by the 

 manner in which the work was prosecuted was much too great, while other cir- 

 cumstances stopped its publication before it could be of use to science. 



