6 



proportion of them, and, a<< the additional species may be grad- 

 ually described in supplements, I venture to introduce them to 

 the acquaintance of the American and European naturalists; 

 being confident that they will not be deemed an inconsiderable 

 addition to our actual knowledge ofcthe finny tribes. To the 

 inhabitants of the western states, to those who feed daily upon 

 them, their correct and scientific account ought to be peculi- 

 arly agreeable. I trust they will value the exertions through 

 which I have been able to accomplish so much in so short a 

 period of time, and I wish I coul3 induce them to lend me 

 their aid, in the succession of my studies of those animals, by 

 communicating new facts, details, and rare species. I may as- 

 sure them that their kind help shall be gratefully received and 

 acknowledged. 



The science of Ichthyology has lately received great additions 

 in the United States. A lew of the atlantic fishes had been for- 

 mcrly enumerated by Catesby, Kalro., Forstcr, Garden, Linnaeus 

 Schoepf, Castiglione, Bloch, Bosc, and Lacepcdc; but Dr. Sam- 

 uel L.. Mitchell has increased our knowledge, with about one 

 hundred new. species, at once, in his two memoirs on the Fishes 

 of New- York, the first published in 1 8 1 4, in the Transactions qf 

 the Literary and Philosophical Society of New- York, and the 

 second in the American Monthly Magazine in 1817. Mr. Le- 

 sueur was the first naturalist who visited Lak*.- Eric and Lake 

 Ontario, where he detected a great number of ixv.w species, 

 which he has already begun to publish in the Journal of the A- 

 cademy of Sciences, of Philadelphia, and which he means to in- 

 troduce in his General History of American Fishes, a work on 

 the plan of Wilson's Ornithology, which he has long had in 

 contemplation. And I have added thereto about forty new spe- 

 cies, which I discovered in Lake Champlain, Lake George, the 

 Chesapeake, the Hudson, near New- York, Philadelphia, the 

 Atlantic, Sec. and published in my Precis des Decouvcrtea, my 

 Memoirs on Sturgeons, my decads and tracts in the Amer- 

 ican Monthly Magazine, the American Journal of Science, &c 

 besides three new fishes of the Ohio, published in the Journal 

 of the Academy of Philadelphia. 

 _ Many -otherJishes of the United States have heen partially 



