41 



find out when editing the work, for Artedi had not 

 quite finished off the copying of them in. The laborious- 

 ness of the task becomes patent to all, when it is known 

 that Artedi was so conscientious that he went back 

 even to the ancient Greek and Latin writers, and en- 

 deavoured to elucidate what they may have meant by 

 their varied and diverse nomenclature and by other state- 

 ments concerning certain fishes. More than 150 forms 

 have been dealt with in that thorough-going style, the 

 quotations under each one often exceeding a score in 

 number. Artedi's "Synonymia", consequently, bears 

 witness in its author not only to an exceptional capa- 

 city for arduous toil and a deep and wide reading, but 

 also to a rare degree of critical acumen and exactitude. 

 For that reason the work forms a practically indispens- 

 able key to the earliest ichthyological literature. 



The fifth and last section of the "Ichthyologia" bears 

 the title "Descriptiones Specierum Piscium quos vivos 

 prsesertim dissecuit et examinavit". Of this section 

 LiNNiEus writes in his Introduction to it as follows: — 

 u You would, indeed, have been amazed, courteous 

 Reader, could you have watched with what persistency, 

 with what never wearying toil, the author of this work 

 proceeded about his self-imposed task of describing his 

 fishes, spending in many cases several whole days over 

 one single fish. Had you been in that fortunate posi- 

 tion, you would have been witness to the wonderfully 

 adroit way in which he would count over the fins, and 

 the individual rays in them, not once only but many 

 times, and to the method he had of enumerating and 

 giving an account of all and each of the dorsal verte- 

 brae ". Linnaeus also informs us that the ma- 

 terial examined for the purpose of Artedi's descriptions 

 was derived in part from Lake Malaren, in part from 

 Norrland waters and the North Sea, and in part also 

 from the seas off the English coasts and out of the 

 museums to which he obtained access. Altogether 

 there were 72 forms which he found opportunity to 

 examine and accurately to describe. He was not con- 



Peter Artedi. 4 



