THE AMERICAN NATURALIST 



[Vol. XL, 



taken from life in Honolulu and Hilo. Most of these are the work 

 of C. B. Hudson and A. H. Baldwin. Captain Hudson's paintings, 

 made in oil, from living fishes in the aquarium, here perfectly repro- 

 duced, constitute beyond question, the finest series of fish portraits 

 ever made by any artist. The wonderfully rich fish fauna of the 

 Hawaiian Islands is now one of the best known in the world. 



This fauna is frankly and entirely tropical and almost all the spe- 

 cies belong to genera found in the South Seas. The species are, 

 however, in large part different. Of the four hundred and thirty- 

 'nine species recognized, two hundred and thirty-two are confined, 

 so far as known, to Hawaii; one hundred and forty-two are found 

 also in Samoa and Fiji; fifty-three are common to Hawaii and Japan, 

 and thirty-four to Hawaii and the off shores of Mexico. The singular 

 isolation of Hawaii, which, so far as fishes are concerned, has no paral- 

 lel among other tropical island groups, may be due in part to the 

 directions of the ocean currents. These currents seem to play a 

 large part in the transportation of species, by floating young fishes 

 from place to place. 



The collections on which this volume is based have been made by 

 the authors, by Oliver P. Jenkins, the first to collect on a large scale 

 in Hawaii, by Charles H. Gilbert, John O. Snyder, Walter K. Fisher, 

 Charles C. Nutting, Michitaro Sindo, and others. 



Part 2, of the same Bulletin, issued as a separate volume, contains 

 an account of the fishes taken about Hawaii in the deep-sea work of 

 the Albatross. This volume is by Dr. Charles H. Gilbert, who was 

 naturalist in charge on the Albatross in 1902. 



About eighty species were obtained in the deep seas. Nearly all 

 of them are new, an addition to our knowledge of fishes with few par- 

 allels in the records of deep-sea dredging. Many new genera are 

 included, and a considerable number of the offshore genera of Japan 

 have their range extended to Hawaii. Among these are Pegasus, 

 Aracana, Gadomus, Hoplichthys, Melanobranchus, Lophiomus, Cal- 

 liurichlhys, and Polymixia. 



This volume is to be commended for the careful accuracy of the 

 descriptions and for the excellence of the plates. 



The Philosophical Institute of Canterbury in New Zealand pub- 

 lishes an index to the New Zealand Fauna by Captain F. W. Hutton. 

 In this volume is a list of the species of fishes known — without 

 onyms or references, the nomenclature being apparently carefully 

 considered. 



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