III. 



The Fishes. 



The object of this part is to give a hst of the fishes occurring in the waters 

 of the Bahamas. It is mostly based on the collections made during my visit to 

 these islands ; but I liave also enumerated those species which, though not observed 

 or obtained by me, have been recorded by previous authors. The collections I have 

 made are, for the most part, from Mastic Point and Nassau, and contain almost 

 exclusively specimens gathered along the beach or among the coral reefs. A few 

 are from brackish ponds. Collections of fishes have at several times been made 

 in the Bahamas; but a detailed study of the fish fauna has never been made. 

 Except a few papers containing descriptions of some new species quite incidentally 

 collected in the Bahamas, there are, if we pass over the old work by Catesby, 

 only three papers dealing with the fish fauna of the Bahamas, viz. : 



Jordan and Bollmatst, List of fishes collected at Green Turtle diy, in the 

 Bahamas, by Charles L. Edwards, with descriptions of three new species. 

 — (Proc. Ü. S. Nat. Mus. 1888, pp. 549—553). 



These collections were made by Edwards in the summer of 1888. 



S. Garman, Report on the Fishes collected by the Bahama Expedition oj the 

 State University of loiva under Professor C. C. Nutting in 1893. — 

 (Bull. Lab. Nat. Hist. Iowa Vol. IV, no. 1, pp. 76—93 1896.) 



This paper contains a list of species, also collected along Florida. 



Barton A. Bean, Fishes of the Bahama Islands. — (The Bahama Islands, ed. 

 by G. B. Shattuck, New York 1905, pp. 293—325.) 



This paper is the only one, as far as I know, that contains a com- 

 plete list of all fishes, recorded from the Bahamas. It is based for the 

 most part on collections made by the author as a member of the Exped- 

 iton, sent to the Bahamas in the summer of 1903 by the Geographical 

 Society oj Baltimore. 



The list of fishes from the Bahamas I now publish contains 216 species, four 

 of these are described as new species. Several genera and species enumerated have 

 not previously been recorded from the Bahamas. 



