386 Mr Yarr ell's History of British Fishes. 
science is connected with the inhabitants of the British waters. 
Linnaeus and his pupils, arid Artedi, were much indebted for their 
information to the naturalists of this country. But it is not, we be- 
lieve, until the appearance of the British Zoology of Pennant in 
1769, that we can lay claim to any work devoted to the history of 
our native fishes. Subsequent to this, we have again only partial 
accounts and treatises scattered in the periodicals of the time, and 
in the works of Banks and Solander, Forster, Gmelin, and Shaw. 
But in comparative anatomy, the age was more fertile, for Cheselden, 
the Hunters, and Monro secundus, gave to the world the results of 
their researches, which have kept their place to the present day. 
In the conclusion of the eighteenth and beginning of the nine- 
teenth centuries, it was evident that the science was slowly and 
quietly gaining ground. Berkenhout's last edition contained a " Sy- 
nopsis of the Natural History of Great Britain and Ireland ;" Shaw 
was occupied with the Ichthyological' part of his General Zoology ; 
Low described several northern fishes in his Fauna Orcadensis ; 
Montagu read some interesting papers to the Wernerian Society ; 
and an industrious naturalist commenced and completed a work of 
much merit. This work of Donovan, begun in 1802, was published 
in numbers, and forms five 8vo volumes, with coloured plates of 120 
species. Many of the figures are remarkably good, and the descrip- 
tions are often accurate, but the price was much beyond the reach of 
the general purchaser, and this excluded it from the library of the 
student. Turton's Compendium of our Fauna, indeed, might easily 
have found a place there, had not the very unattractive appearance 
of his little volume, and the dry nakedness of the compilation, and 
its inherent want of value, been as effectual to its non-admission as 
a prohibitory price. Fleming's British Animals in 1828, gave the 
next most complete synoptical arrangement of our fishes ;* after 
which our progress was marked by many excellent papers in our 
periodicals and transactions, in which Montagu continued to contri- 
bute, and the names of Couch, Fleming, Neill, Jardine, and our au- 
thor, bore prominent parts ; discoveries and additions were making 
rapidly, and a work of moderate size and moderate price, giving a 
connected view of the latest acquisitions, with figures and descrip- 
* We should not neglect here the important attempt made in the same year 
by our learned countrywoman, Mrs Bowdich, to illustrate the fresh water fishes 
of Britain by drawings and descriptions. The manual labour required by the 
manner in which the work was prosecuted was much too great, while other cir- 
cumstances stopped its publication before it could be of use to science. 
