PISCES. 
133 
PISCES 
BY 
I Albert Gunther, M.A., M.D., Ph.D. 
- A. Works in Progress. 
Catalogue of the Fishes in the British Museum. By Albert 
Gunther. London, 8vo. 
Like several of the Catalogues published by the Trustees of the 
British Museum, the present work eontains descriptions not only 
of the species represented in the British Museum, but also of those 
known to exist in other collections; that is to say, it forms a 
complete handbook of Ichthyology, in which all the species 
known are described and systematically arranged. During the 
last thirty years the number of species has been so much in- 
creased, that without such a handbook their determination has 
become a matter of great difficulty and uncertainty. Besides, with 
the increase of our knowledge, the growing defects of the system 
proposed by Cuvier and Muller have become apparent, rendering 
necessary a further subdivision of the families and a revision of 
the genera. Such a work could not be successfully undertaken 
without the aid of the richest collection of materials combined 
with a library in which scarcely any publication referring to the 
subject is wanting. Of course the author has been obliged to 
leave many doubtful points in the state in which he found them, 
whenever, in fact, his materials did not enable him critically to 
examine and complete the insufficient descriptions of previous 
authors ; indeed, in such an extensive work it could not but be 
expected that errors should occur which might have been 
avoided ; but on the whole it is already apparent that his work 
is as useful to Ichthyologists generally as it has been beneficial 
to the collection on which it was based. 
Up to the present time five volumes have been published : 
the first three, issued in the years 1859-61, are taken up with 
the Acanthopterygians, of which 3481 species are known; 2811 
of them are considered to be well characterized and described, 
the remainder being merely quoted as forms which require 
further confirmation. In Cuvier and Valenciennes^s ' Histoire 
Naturelle des Poissons,^ the last published general ichthyological 
