Some Observations on Ohio Fishes. \ 1 5 



of North America are comprised in 30 families, 25 of which are rep- 

 resented in Ohio waters, about as many as in any inland State. 



The earliest investigation or mention of the fishes of Ohio in a 

 scientific way was by C. S. Rafinesque, a Franco German naturalist, 

 born in Constantinople. During the years 18 18 and 18 19 he 

 explored the Ohio and its tributaries from Pittsburg to the Falls of 

 the Ohio, at Louisville, and published the results of his labors in 

 various scientific journals of the United States and France. In 

 1820, while Professor of Botany and Natural History in Transyl- 

 vania University, he published at Lexington, Ky. , his " Ichthyologia 

 Ohiensis, or Natural History of the Fishes inhabiting the River 

 Ohio and its tributary streams." 



In this little work of ninety pages Rafinesque describes in spe- 

 cies, of which but about one-half have been since identified as valid 

 species, as some are evidently " myths " described to him by other 

 persons, and in many cases he has described a species under sev- 

 eral different names, and still others are so far unidentified. Of 

 the 55 or 60 valid species, all but three — the alligator gar, the brook 

 trout and the saw-fish — in habit the Ohio or its tributaries within 

 the limits of the State of Ohio. 



In 1838, Dr. J. P. Kirtland, in his " Report on the Zoology of 

 Ohio," gives a catalogue with descriptions of 72 species, and later, 

 in 1840-46, he published in the Boston Journal of Natural History 

 a series of papers on the "Fishes of Lake Erie, the Ohio River 

 and their Tributaries/' in which he gives excellent descriptions and 

 tolerable figures of but 66 species, having omitted or suppressed a 

 few species of his first list. 



In 1876 Mr. J. H. Klippart, in the first report of the Ohio Fish 

 Commission, describes 26 species of food fishes, compiled from the 

 manuscript of Dr. David S. Jordan by Prof. Chas. H. Gilbert; 

 and in 1878, in the second report of the Commission, Mr. Klip- 

 part describes 22 additional food fishes of Ohio, though several of 

 them were included in his first list under different names. The 

 scientific descriptions of the genera and species of this list were 

 compiled from the manuscript of Dr. Jordan by Dr. E. Copeland. 



In 1882 Dr. Jordan published a " Report on the Fishes of Ohio," 

 in Vol. IV of the Geological Survey of Ohio. In this report Dr. 

 Jordan gives very full descriptions of 165 species, supposed to 

 inhabit the waters of Ohio, based on the papers of Rafinesque and 

 Kirtland, and on his catalogues of the fishes of Indiana and other 



