EDITORIAL PREFACE. 
Fre teen years have passed since the publication of Dr. G. Brown 
Goode’s work on ‘“‘ American Fishes.” Its merits soon became appre- 
ciated, and it has been for some time “out of print.” The present owners of 
the copyright and plates, impelled by the continued demands for the work, 
resolved to reprint it, but, conscious that many changes had taken place 
since it was written, applied to the present editor to bring it up to date. 
The work was the summary of the observations and reports of a large 
corps of experts in ichthyology as well as fisheries and economics, originally 
employed by the Census Bureau. It contained a fund of information that 
could not be found in any other work accessible to the general public, and 
it still holds that place. Nevertheless, in the lapse of time, many changes 
had been made in the nomenclature of the species, not a few species had 
been added, and several important groups of fishes that had been neglected 
required attention. 
The data in the work related to two independent subjects: one, the life 
history or habits of the species ; the other, the statistics of the fisheries. 
The former has not changed, and what was true fifteen years ago is still 
true ; the latter is constantly changing, but the relative values of the differ- 
ent fisheries have not greatly varied. 
Very recently the conundrum was propounded in a highly esteemed 
English newspaper— Zhe London Morning Post—‘ When is an author not 
an author?” An original author’s work may be revised by another, and 
“rewritten” by still another. “Any one who scans an educational cata- 
logue in almost any department of learning will admit the pertinence of this 
query, and we hesitate to pronounce on the morality of the practice.” 
This proposition is so apt that when the question came up, to what 
extent shall Goode’s work be edited? the best answer seemed to be, by not 
interfering with the text at all except in a few cases of grave and inadver- 
tent error. Otherwise, the author should receive all the commendation to 
which his work is entitled and be held responsible for its defects. There 
need then be no question as to the authorship of any given part. The work 
is that of Goode with the following deviations and additions. 
The figure under-named “The Herring” on page 381 was that of the 
