VIVIPAROUS FISHES OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 
405 
HISTORICAL NOTICE OF EMBIOTOCID.® . 
The fact that the species of EmMotocidce are viviparous was nearly simultaneously 
discovered by J. K. Lord, at Vancouver Island; A. 0. Jackson, at San Francisco, June 
7, 1852; W. P. Gibbons, at San Francisco; and Dr. Thomas H. Webb, May 3, 1852, at 
San Diego.* 
Prof. Agassiz published the first account of these fishes in 1853 (collected by 
Jackson). 
The interest excited by the announcement of the discovery is shown by the fol- 
lowing account from Prof. Gill’s u Prefatory ” of his Bibliography of the Fishes of the 
Pacific Coast of the United States to the end of the year 1879. He states : 
The fishes of California remained absolutely unknown till 1839, when a glimpse, hut an entirely 
inadequate one, was furnished hy Lay and Bennett in their notes and account of species collected 
during the voyage of the English vessel Blossom ; along silence then supervened, and, with the excep- 
tions thus signalized, and the addition hy Storer of a single species of Syngnathus in 1846, west-coast 
ichthyography commenced in 1854 with the announcement hy Prof. Agassiz of the discovery of the 
remarkable family of Embiotocoids. This was speedily followed hy numerous communications by Dr. 
Gibbons, Dr. Girard, and Dr. Ayres, on new species of fishes, mostly from the Californian waters, 
but partly from Oregonian ones. As early as 1858 nearly two hundred species had been made known. 
The exact date of Lord’s and Gibbons’s t observations I do not know, but Webb 
has a whole month’s priority over Jackson. Jackson, however, communicated his dis- 
covery to Louis Agassiz, so that his observations were made public in the fall of 1853, 
and Dr. Webb’s not until May, 1854, and more fully in 1858, while Lord’s account did 
not appear till 1866. Since the notes are brief I will give in their own words the 
observations of these gentlemen. Gibbon’s account I have not seen. Mr. Jackson, in 
a letter to Agassiz, states : 
On the 7th of June I arose early in the morning for the purpose of taking a mess of fish for break- 
fast ; pulled to the usual place, baited with crabs, and commenced fishing, the wind blowing too strong 
for profitable angling. Nevertheless on the first and second casts I fastened the two fishes, male and 
female, that I write about, and such were their liveliness and strength that they endangered my slight 
trout rod. I however succeeded in bagging both, though in half an hour’s subsequent work I got not 
even a nibble from either this or any other species of fish. I determined to change the bait to put 
upon my hook a portion of the fish already caught and cut for that purpose into the largest of the two 
fish caught. I intended to take a piece from the thin part of the belly, when what was my surprise 
to see coming from the opening thus made a small live fish. * * * I was vastly astonished to 
find next to the back of the fish and slightly attached to it a long very light violet bag so clear and 
so transparent that I could already distinguish through it the shape, color, and formation of a multi- 
tude of small fish (all facsimiles of each other) with which it was well filled. * * * There can 
not remain in the mind of any one who sees the fish in the same state that I did, a single doubt that 
these young were the offspring of the fish from whose body I took them, and that this species of fish 
gives birth to her young alive and perfectly formed, and adapted to seeking its own livelihood in the 
water. The number of young in the bag was nineteen and every one as brisk and lively and as much 
at home in a bucket of salt water as if they had been for months accustomed to the water. 
* Brevoort records a specimen of viviparous fish discovered by Dr. John L. LeConte in 1851. See 
ante under “ Ditrema temminvkii,” and Prof. Geo. Davidson, of the U. S. Coast Survey, tells me that 
he had noted their viviparity long before any published notices of the fact appeared. 
t Agassiz (1854, 368), states: “ I have just been informed (February 28 [1854]) that the California 
Academy of Natural Sciences claims for Dr.W. P. Gibbons the discovery of the viviparous fishes upon 
which I had established the family Holconoti. * * * Dr. Thomas H. Webb, one of the scientific 
corps of the Mexican Boundary Line Commission, has sent me * * * the following abstract from 
his diary dated San Diego, May 3, 1852: 'Caught * * * a number of small fish, about 2 or 3 
inches long, each of which contained ten or twelve living young.’” 
