A. C. L. G. Giinther. 



XIX 



for wood, and in this he anticipated what thirty years later became the rule 

 in the finest collections. In insisting on the formation of a Natural History 

 Library in connection with the National Collection, and in the policy of 

 distributing duplicates to provincial museums, he held enlightened views, 

 which have since been fully acted on. 



His work on the Shore Fishes of the " Challenger " (1879) showed that 

 even the limited opportunities of the naturalists for making such collections 

 were productive, for the series consisted of 1400 specimens, of which 94 were 

 new to science. Yet the chief efforts of the explorers were devoted only to 

 such localities as were previously more or less uninvestigated, and which were 

 rarely visited. His familiarity with the subject and his methodical method 

 of working enabled him to issue this volume whilst Sir Wyville Thomson 

 was still at the head of the " Challenger " office. Dr. Giinther took the 

 opportunity of widening our knowledge with regard to the mutual relations 

 of the fishes of the deep and shallow waters, and of demonstrating the wide 

 range of many, both as regards depth and locality. He fixed the dividing 

 line between these and the deep-sea fishes at 100 fathoms, though Sir Wyville 

 Thomson and he at first thought that the dividing line should be from 300 

 to 350 fathoms, and his grounds were that " no fish not known at present to 

 have occurred beyond the 100 fathom line is admitted in the Report ; and, 

 further, that ho truly bathybial fish is known to live habitually above that 

 line." 



In his great work on the Deep-sea Fishes of the " Challenger " (1887) he 

 combined all the information gained during the subsequent productive cruises 

 of the " Knight Errant " and " Triton," as well as such new materials as could 

 be gleaned from the fragmentary and preliminary notices of the expeditions 

 by the two Institutions of the United States, and by the expeditions of the 

 French, Norwegian, and Italian Governments. The total specimens were 

 referred to 266 species, of which 177 fell to the share of the " Challenger " 

 •and 14 to the exploration of the Faroe Channel. The number of new 

 forms amounted to no less than 144, whilst 10 were added to the fauna 

 of the British seas. Every trained zoologist will coincide with his concluding 

 words in the preface, viz. : " My technical descriptions of the Challenger 

 fishes will be found to be much more concise than those given by some 



recent writers the practice of circumstantially describing every 



minute detail of the surface of a fish, repeating every point of structure 

 common to all the species of the genus or family, and indiscriminately 

 mixing individual characters with specific, not only renders the use of these 

 lengthy descriptions a laborious and thankless task, but actually leads to 

 misunderstandings not less frequently than the insufficient short diagnoses 

 that have been prepared by inexperienced describers." 



In this valuable treatise he first gives a careful historical digest of the 

 subject, referring especially to the work of the Norwegian North Atlantic 

 Expedition and to that of the United States Fish Commission under 

 Prof. Alex. Agassiz and Dr. Spencer Baird, the former expedition reaching 



