33 



VERTEBRATA -PISCES. 



Corrected and Revised by Thomas Cornish y^yiA^ 



SINCE the late Mr. Jonathan Couch wrote on the fishes of 

 Cornwall in his " Cornish Fauna," thirty nine years have 

 elapsed. Within that period Yarrell has published an Appendix 

 to each of his two volumes ; Couch himself has published his 

 " British Fishes " The Zoologist " has been an open record of 

 all the new observations on British Fishes, and last (and least) 

 I have had myself the pleasure of maintaining a constant cor- 

 respondence on Ichthyology with Mr. Couch during the last twelve 

 years of his life, and whilst I was yet in leading strings as a 

 naturalist I enjoyed the great advantage of a close personal 

 friendship with the well-skilled son of a well-skilled father, the 

 late Mr. E. Q. Couch, of Penzance. Of course in the lapse of 

 so many years many new fishes have been observed in our Cor- 

 nish seas, and many observations on old ones have been corrected, 

 and therefore with the advantages of which I boast I approach 

 the revision of Mr. Couch's list of fishes with less diffidence than 

 I should otherwise have felt. 



His work must stand. It is a perfectly accurate record of the 

 state of ichthyological knowledge in 1838, and in revising it I 

 propose to leave out a good deal of information which was very 

 interesting then but has been since superseded ; and I hope to 

 add some details of more active interest at the present time. 



For the sake of preserving as much similarity in the two lists 

 as is possible I propose to follow the classification adopted by 

 Mr. Couch, but as he is now himself a greater authority than 

 the author (Jenyns) whom he most frequently quotes, and whoso 

 work is now but rarely to be met with, I shall substitute his own 

 work (" Couch's British Fishes," 1st ed., 1862-1865) for that of 

 the older writer. This course will be attended by the further 

 advantage that in making Couch's British Fishes the book on 

 which I work I can shorten my list by the omission of all refer- 

 ence to it. Whoever wishes to learn the full history of any fish 



