THE FISHES OF PORTO RICO. 
By BARTON W. EVERMANN and MILLARD C. MARSH. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In preparing this report upon the fishes of Porto Rico it seemed desirable to 
include not only those obtained by us, but to give diagnoses of all the families and 
genera and detailed descriptions of all the species now known from those waters. 
That the species may be readily determined we have given very full keys leading to 
the definite identification of each, including certain genera and species which, though 
not yet actually known from Porto Rican waters, may hereafter be found to occur 
there. The unrecorded genera and species are, however, not numbered in the keys. 
The keys to the families are also of the same character. 
The keys and all the diagnoses of families and genera are adapted from “The 
Fishes of North and Middle America,” by Jordan & Evermann. which work we have 
followed in the arrangement and sequence of genera and species. 
The descriptions of all the species of which we have specimens have either been 
wholly from Porto Rican material or verified upon specimens from that island, and 
in the majority of cases the color descriptions are from living specimens. 
The common names inclosed in quotation marks are the names by which the 
species are known in Porto Rico. The other common names are those by which the 
species are known at Key West or elsewhere. 
It has not been the intention to give much synonymy. In every case reference 
is made to the original description of each species, to all original synonyms, to Poey's 
and Stahl’s papers on Porto Rican fishes, and to Jordan & Evermann’s “Fishes of 
North and Middle America.” The locality named at the end of each reference is that 
from which the type of the species came. 
Of the 49 colored plates, 33 were made by Mr. A. IT. Baldwin, and 16 by Mr. 
C. B. Hudson. All those by Mr. Baldwin were painted on board the Fish /latch, the 
fish being placed in an aquarium as soon as caught and the life colors gotten before 
they had undergone any appreciable change. 
Among the fishes painted from life by Mr. Hudson at Key West, Fla., in the 
winter of 1897-98, are 16 species which occur in Porto Rico, and his paintings of 
those are used in this report. The fish were selected from those (usually a large 
number) brought in by the fishermen in the live-wells of their boats and transferred 
to a large aquarium on the pier only a few feet distant from the fishing boats, where 
they were kept in as nearly a normal condition as possible while being painted. We 
can not give too high praise to the artists, Mr. Hudson and Mr. Baldwin, for the care 
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