Mr Yarr ell's History of British Fishes. 385 



wonderful, most wonderful in structure, that swarm in the expanse 

 of the mighty waters which are placed on the surface of the world. 

 And will it not be accounted strange, then, that it has only been 

 since the commencement of the present century, that the study of 

 this interesting and important class of living creatures has really re- 

 ceived an impulse, and has begun to be examined by the same prin- 

 ciples and careful analysis to which the other sections are subjected. 

 Looking to the early literature of the science generally, we have 

 various writers, of as varied fame and talents, touching upon the 

 natures of fish in their historyes and poetry ; but they were more 

 taken up with the dieteticks of the art, than with the structure of 

 the creatures. So was it also in the olden time of British story. The 

 stews and vivaries occupied the most attention, and in the record of 

 an accurate and quaint historian, "as every water hath a sundrie mix- 

 ture, and therefore is not stored Avith every kind, so there is almost no 

 house, even of the meanest tounes, which have not one or mo ponds 

 or holes made for reservation of water instored with some of them, 

 as with tench, carpe, breame, roach, dace, eeles, or such like, as will 

 live and breed together."* The middle of the sixteenth century, 

 perhaps, affords us the first names which can be quoted as scientific. 

 Belon, Rondolet, and Salvianus are sufficiently known. Between 

 the dates of the works of these authors, to nearly the middle of 

 1600, we find many which have treated partially of Ichthyology ; and 

 about the same period, the compilation of Johnson gave a kind of 

 new zest to the subject in this country. Two British names, how- 

 ever, of the same age, but a few years later, did more for the ad- 

 vance of the science than all which had been previously achieved, — 

 more, perhaps, every thing considered, than has even since been ac- 

 complished. Reducing from a chaos the observations of their prede- 

 cessors, they produced an arrangement which has allowed their fol- 

 lowers to re-arrange with comparative facility, and which, in fact, 

 constitutes the basis of the systems which were afterwards proposed, 

 while their descriptions of formerly known or newly observed species 

 are characterized with a greater degree of accuracy. It will easily 

 be perceived that we allude to Willoughby and Ray, names insepa- 

 rable from each other, and from the history of British Ichthyology. 

 From the date of the works of these excellent men to the middle 

 of 1700, there appears a wide gap, so far as the literature of the 



* Holinshed, Hist, of England. The necessity of having a regular supply of 

 fish during Lent and other Catholic holidays, may account for the remarkable 

 attention paid to the breeding of them in these early times. 



