VERTEBRATA-PJ-SC'^S. 
Corrected and Revised ly Thomas Cornish 
S INCE 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-skiUed 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 correetecE 
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interesting then but has been since superseded ; and I hope to 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 whose 
■Work is now but rarely to be met with, I shall substitute his own 
work (“ Couch’s British Fishes,” 1st ed., 1862-1866) 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 
wHch I work I can shorten my list by the omission of aU refer- 
ence to it. Whoever wishes to learn the full history of any fish 
