INTRODUCTION. 



Notwithstanding the high rank which our countryman Ray occupies in the 

 annals of Natural History as a founder of systematic ichthyology, that branch of 

 science has been greatly neglected in this country, — yet Britain owes much of her 

 wealth to her fisheries ; and her seamen, traversing the ocean in all directions, are 

 familiar with the finny inhabitants of almost every river in the world, as well as 

 with the wonders of the deep. While the fish of the English seas were imper- 

 fectly known, it was not to be expected that those frequenting the waters of a 

 remote colony would be more fully described ; and, in fact, this volume of the 

 Fauna owes comparatively little to the labours of previous writers in respect of 

 the determination and description of species, though the arrangement and generic 

 groups are adopted wholly from Cuvier. Forster, in the Philosophical Transactions 

 of 1773, gives an account of four Hudson's Bay fish, three of which he errone- 

 ously identifies with European species ; and he is the only ichthyologist that I 

 have been able to cite respecting the fish which sport in the sea-like lakes and 

 magnificent rivers of the portion of North America lying north of the St. Law- 

 rence, and exceeding the whole of Europe in extent of territory. There is, I 

 believe, no scientific account of the Canada fish, with the exception of M. Le 

 Sueur's and Dr. Mitchill's descriptions of a few lacustrine species. Some of those 

 inhabiting the seas of Newfoundland are included in the published volumes of the 

 H'utotie des Poissons, by Cuvier and Valenciennes. Fabricius's and the work 

 last mentioned are my authorities for the Greenland fish, and I am indebted to the 

 Appendices to the late Arctic Expeditions for those found on the northern shores 

 of America. Pallas, Steller, and Tilesius have described the fish inhabiting the 

 sea of Kamtschatka, and such of them as are known to range over to the Ame- 



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