Gossip about Fish. 99 



M. Laborde does not give us any information on the rates of 

 velocity which produce the different effects ; but we apprehend 

 those of our readers who wish to repeat his experiments will 

 have little trouble in preparing the necessary apparatus, as 

 the velocities required in the movement cannot be great. 



GOSSIP ABOUT FISH * 



Me. Couch's great work on British Fishes has arrived punc- 

 tually at its termination in the fourth and concluding volume, 

 which contains no less than seventy-three beautifully executed 

 coloured plates. The entire work is enriched by two hundred 

 and fifty-two coloured plates and numerous woodcuts. The 

 illustrations thus afforded by Mr. Couch are the more valuable 

 from being, with very few exceptions, drawn by his own hand 

 from freshly caught specimens, and thus they are characterized 

 by a degree of fidelity rarely attained in natural history 

 works. Another highly important and valuable peculiarity of 

 Couch's British Fishes is the large amount of information which 

 it affords concerning the habits of the creatures described. 

 Some of the older naturalists, with considerable talent for 

 observation, were not sufficiently careful in description, and 

 hence it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to identify 

 the objects of their research. Since their days a new school 

 has grown up, very careful in descriptive accuracy, and, we 

 might add, very careless as to modes of life, and relations 

 of habit to structure, which really constitute the essence of 

 natural history, properly so called. Those who write as 

 Museum naturalists may add very valuably to the means of 

 identifying species ; but unless their labours are supplemented 

 by the observation of the field naturalist, they eventuate in 

 nothing better than a long catalogue of names. Inaccuracy 

 of description destroys the worth of field labours, because 

 it leaves in doubt to what particular creature they were directed ; 

 but accurate description is of little value until some observer 

 of habit, or some deep-thinking tracer of structural relations, has 

 built up the raw material thus afforded into something that 

 may be fairly dignified with the name of science. 



The different dispositions and capacities of men naturally 

 cause them to view external objects, and especially living ones, 

 from two distinct points of view. According to one, and the 



* A History of the Fishes of the British Islands, by Jonathan Couch, F.L.S. 

 4 vols. Groombridge and Sons, 1862—1866. "Vol. i., fifty-seven coloured plates ; 

 "Vol. ii., sixty-three, ditto ; Vol. hi., fifty-nine ditto ; Yol. iv., seventy-three ditto, 

 from drawings by the Author. 



