viii PREFACE 



on the one hand broadening its scope and on the other including even 

 more minute details. In the former regard the editors were frequently- 

 puzzled to decide where to lay down an ultimate boundary, e. g. to 

 determine whether certain groups of titles should be subdivided, re- 

 arranged or even rejected. 



Explanation of Materials in the Present Volume 

 Of sections (III) to (VI) little need here be said. The Pre-Linncean 

 Literature (III) (from the earhest writings up to 1758) is cited in detail 

 and only after laborious research. In gathering this material the 

 works themselves have in many cases been scrutinized even to their 

 revisions and versions, those in English checked largely after the 

 studies of Lowndes. The earhest papers on Angling and Pisciculture 

 follow in the main the work of Westwood and Satchell. And for the 

 reader's convenience extremely rare works are noted as occurring in 

 definite libraries. 



Regarding Errata and Corrigenda (VII), a more detailed examina- 

 tion of bibliographies cited in special memoirs has yielded additional 

 titles and has enabled us to correct defective citations. On the other 

 hand, as is often, the case in bibliography, we, have found that lists of 

 works cited in special memoirs are usually, if not always, seriously 

 defective; even in so special a study as the list of papers of Dr. GiU, 

 prepared by the Smithsonian, thirty-two titles were missed which we 

 had earlier collected, while, truth to teU, it contained about twenty 

 titles which were not on our cards. Or in the instance of so scholarly 

 and detailed a work as Gemmill's "Teratology of Fishes" we have 

 been able by consulting a greater range of authors to increase its 

 number of references by no less than one-fourth. Another example is 

 in Ackermann's (K. 1898.1) studies of hybrids among fishes where only 

 nineteen hybrids are recorded, while the present work enumerates 

 over fifty (including, of course, later citations). In general it will be 

 found that our titles end with the year 1914 — which marks a con- 

 venient international stopping point as a result of the Great War. It 

 is true that a number of later papers are cited in our pages, but these 

 only for special reasons — as in rounding out the bibliographies of 

 writers who since have died (e. g. Eastman, Steindachner), or in com- 

 pleting outstanding works {e.g. Jordan's "Genera" or Boulenger's 

 "Fishes of Africa"). In certain instances where especially important 

 papers had appeared they have been cited in our Subject Index. 



The Alphabetical Index of Subjects (VIII) requires a long explanatory 

 note. Indeed it is clear that the diverse materials sifted from a vast 

 number of references, nearly fifty thousand, could not, in the nature 



