62 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



BOOK REVIEWS. 



Edited by William Frederic Bade. 



A Guide to 

 THE Study 

 OF Fishes/' 



President David Starr Jordan of Stanford Uni- 

 versity is without doubt our leading American 

 authority on fishes. This monumental work* is 

 splendid evidence of his industry, perseverance, 



and scientific acumen. It is not often that one comes across a 

 work so satisfying in every way. Were it not for the fascinat- 

 ingly written subject-matter, of equal interest to the technical 

 student and to the angler, a reviewer might be appalled by the 

 size of these two sumptuous octavo volumes. They embrace more 

 than twelve hundred pages, profusely illustrated in white-and- 

 black and in half-tone, and the frontispiece of each volume shows 

 in colors some of the remarkable fish brought by the author from 

 his Pacific explorations. The following titles of chapters, selected 

 at random from the first volume, will indicate the interesting 

 character of the contents : "The Organs of Respiration," "The 

 Organs of Sense," "Instincts, Habits, and Adaptations," "Colors 

 of Fishes," "Fishes as Food for Man," "The History of Ichthyol- 

 ogy," "The True Sharks," etc. Even "The Mytholog}^ of Fishes" 

 has not been overlooked. Among other things the author, in the 

 last-mentioned chapter, refers to the popular superstitions about 

 mermaids : "In China small mermaids are very often made and 

 sold to the curious. The head and torso of a monkey are fastened 

 ingeniously to the body and tail of a fish." The manufacture of 

 these "curios has long been a profitable industry in the Orient." 

 In a brief discussion of the sea-serpent myths Dr. Jordan, while 

 disposed to regard most of the stories as mere sailors' yarns, or 

 stories resting on incorrect observation, suggests that some of 

 them may relate to real fishes. Thus "the sea-serpent with an 

 uprearing red mane like that of a horse is the oar-fish (Regal- 

 ecus), a long, slender, fragile fish compressed like a ribbon and 

 reaching a length of 255 feet." Very interesting is the photograph 

 of a specimen of this genus (Vol. I, p. 362), stranded on the 

 California coast at Newport, in Orange County. The recently 

 discovered frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus angineus, pictured 



* A Guide to the Study of Fishes. By David Starr Jordan. Two colored 

 rontispieces and 936 illustrations. 2 vols.; pp. xxvi, 624, and xxii, 598. Published 

 by Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1905. 8vo. Price, S12 net. 



