4o6 The History of Ichthyology 



scarcely an investigator in biology, in America, who is not directly 

 indebted to him for critical aid of the highest importance. The 

 present writer cannot too strongly express his own obliga- 

 tions to this great teacher, his master in fish taxonomy. 

 Dr. Gill's work is not centered in any single great treatise, 

 but is diffused through a very large number of brief papers 

 and catalogues, those from 1861 to 1865 mostly pubhshed 

 by the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, those 

 of recent date by the United States National Museum. 

 For many years Dr. Gill has been identified with the work 

 of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. 



Closely associated with Dr. Gill was Dr. Edward Drinker 

 Cope, of Philadelphia, a tireless worker in almost every field of 

 zoology, and a large contributor to the broader fields of ichthy- 

 ological taxonomy as well as to various branches of descrip- 

 tive zoology. Cope was one of the first to insist on the close 

 relation of the true ganoids with the teleost fishes, the nearest 

 related group of which he defined as Isospondyli. At the same 

 time he recognized the wide range of dift'erence even among the 

 forms which Johannes Muller had assembled under that name. 

 In breadth of vision and keenness of insight, Cope ranked with 

 the first of taxonomic writers. Always bold and original, he 

 was not at all times accurate in details, and to the final result 

 in classification his contribution has been less than that of Dr. 

 Gill. Professor Cope also wrote largely on American fresh- 

 water fishes, a large percentage of the Cyprinidee and Percidae 

 of the eastern United States having been discovered by him, 

 as well as much of the Rocky Mountain fauna. In later years 

 his attention was absorbed by the fossil forms, and most of 

 the species of Cretaceous rocks and the Eocene shales of Wyo- 

 ming were made known through his ceaseless activity. 



The enumeration of other workers in the great field of 

 ichthyology must assume something of the form of a cata- 

 logue. Part of the impulse received from the great works of 

 Cuvier and Valenciennes and of Gimther was spent in con- 

 nection with voyages of travel. In 1824 Ouoy and Gaimard 

 published in Paris the great foho work on the fishes collected 

 by the corvette I'Urauie and la PJiysicicnnc in Freycinet's 

 voyages around the world, and in 1834 the same authors pub- 



