PROLOGUE. 
‘Hfizlq filv \%&uoXoyr]<;oiJi£v. 
Athen^eus : Deipnosophia. 
4 6/^OME, let us discourse about fish,” said Athenaeus, in his “ Deipno- 
^ sophia,” and so said Mr. A. R. Hart, coming into my study 
last January. “ Write us a book about fish and fishing in America,” 
he urged, and since, as it happens, I know more about fish and fishing in 
America than I do about anything else, I consented. 
This volume has been prepared for the use of the angler, the lover of 
nature, and the general reader. It is not intended for naturalists, and the 
technicalities of zoological description have therefore been avoided ; for 
the concise and precise phraseology of science, admirable though it be for 
the use of those who have been trained to employ it, is to others not only 
misleading, but it may be, repulsive. 
I have aimed to include in my discussion every North American fish 
which is likely to be of interest to the general reader, either because of 
its gameness or its economic uses. All others are excluded, because, 
from the standpoint of scientific interest, every one of the seventeen hun¬ 
dred and fifty species indigenous to our continent has equal claim to con¬ 
sideration, and to discuss, or even casually mention them all, within the 
limits of a book of ordinary size, would be next to impossible. President 
Jordan’s recent pamphlet, entitled “A Catalogue of the Fishes Known 
to Inhabit the Waters North of the Tropic of Cancer, with notes on the 
Species Discovered in 1883 and 1884,” contains, with its indexes, 184 
pages, and this is merely a list. His “ Synopsis of the Fishes of North 
America,” which simply enumerates and gives brief diagnoses of the four¬ 
teen hundred, or more species known in 1882, contains 1018 pages. The 
former of these works is published by the United States Fish Commission, 
the latter by the National Museum, and to these and to the numerous 
monographic papers published in the transactions of learned societies and 
scientific institutions in America and abroad, I would refer the student 
