THE HISTORY OF ICHTHYOLOGY
Science consists of human experience, tested and placed in order. The
science of ichthyology represents our knowledge of fishes, derived
from varied experiences of man, tested by methods or instruments of
precision and arranged in orderly sequence. This science, in common
with every other, is the work of many persons, each in his own
field, and each contributing a series of facts, a series of tests of
the alleged facts of others, or some improvement in the method of
arrangement. As in other branches of science, this work has been done
by sincere, devoted men, impelled by a love for this kind of labor, and
having in view, as "the only reward they asked, a grateful remembrance
of their work." And in token of this reward it is well sometimes,
in grateful spirit, to go over the names of those who made even its
present stage of completeness possible.
We may begin the history of ichthyology with that of so many others of
the sciences, with the work of Aristotle (383-322 B.C.). This wonderful
observer recorded many facts concerning the structure and habits of the
fishes of Greece, and in almost every case his actual observation bears
the closest modern test. These observations were hardly "set in order."
The number of species he knew was small, about 118 in all, and it did
not occur to him that they needed classification. His ideas of species
were those of the fishermen, and the local vernacular supplied him with
the only names needed in his records.
As Dr. Günther wisely observes, "It is less surprising that Aristotle
should have found so many truths as that none of his followers should
have added to them." For nearly 1800 years the scholars of the times
copied the words of Aristotle, confusing them by the addition of
fabulous stories and foolish superstitions, never going back to nature
herself, "who leads us to absolute truth whenever we wander." A few
observations were made by Caius Plinius, Claudius Ælianus, Athenæus and
others. Theophrastus (370-270 B.C.) wrote on the fishes which may live
out of water. About 400 A.D., Decius Magnus Ausonius wrote a pleasing
little poem on the Moselle, setting forth the merits of its various
fishes. It was not, however, until the middle of the seventeenth
century that any advance was made in the knowledge of fishes. At that
time the development of scholarship among the nations of Europe was
such that a few wise men were able to grasp the idea of species.
In 1553, Pierre Bélon (1518-64) published his octavo volume of 448
pages, entitled "De Aquatilibus," in which numerous (110) species of
fishes of the Mediterranean were described, with tolerable figures,
and with these is a creditable attempt at classification. At about
this time Ulysses Aldrovandi, of Bologna, founded the first museum
of natural history and wrote on the fishes it contained. In 1554-58,
Ippolito Salviani (1513-72), a physician at Rome, published a work
entitled "Aquatilium Animalium Historia," with good figures of most of
the species, together with much general information as to the value and
habits of animals of the sea.
More important than these, but almost simultaneous with them, is the
great work of Guillaume Rondelet (1507-57), "De Piscibus Marinus"
(1554-55), at first written in Latin, later translated into French
and enlarged under other titles. In this work, 244 different species,
chiefly from the Mediterranean, are fairly described, and the
various fables previously current are subjected to severe scrutiny.
Recognizable woodcuts represent the different species. Classification,
Rondelet had none, except as simple categories for purposes of
convenience. More than usual care is given to the vernacular names,
French and Greek. He closes his book with these words:
"Or s'il en i a qui prennent les choses tant à la rigueur, qui ne
veulent rien apparouver qui ne soit du tout parfait, je les prie
de bien bon cueur de traiter telle, ou quelque autre histoire
parfaitement, sans qu'il i ait chose quelconque à redire et la
receverons é haut louerons bien vouluntiers. Cependant je scai bien,
et me console . . . avec grand travail . . . qu'on pourra trouver
plusieurs bones choses e dignes de louange ou proufit é contentement
des homes studieux é à l'honneur é grandissime admiration des tres
excellens é perfaits oeuvres de Dieu."
And with the many "bones choses" of the work of Rondelet, men were
too long satisfied, and it was not until the impulse of commerce had
brought them face to face with new series of animals not found in the
Mediterranean that the work of investigating fishes was again resumed.
About 1640, Prince Moritz (Maurice) of Nassau (1604-79) visited Brazil,
taking with him two physicians, Georg Marcgraf (1610-44) and Wilhelm
Piso. In the great work "Historia Naturalis Brasiliæ," published at
Leyden (1648), Marcgraf described about one hundred species, all new
to science, under Portuguese names and with a good deal of spirit and
accuracy. This work was printed by Piso after Marcgraf's death, and his
colored drawings--long afterward used by Bloch--are in the "History of
Brazil" reduced to small and crude woodcuts. This is the first study
of a local fish fauna outside the Mediterranean region and it reflects
great credit on Marcgraf and on the illustrious prince whose assistant
he was.
There were no other similar attempts of importance in ichthyology for
a hundred years, when Per Osbeck, an enthusiastic student of Linnæus,
published (1757) the records of his cruise to China, under the name of
"Iter Chinensis." At about the same time another of Linnæus' students,
Fredrik Hasselquist, published, in his "Iter Palestinum" the account
of his discoveries of fishes in Palestine and Egypt. More pretentious
than these and of much value as an early record is Mark Catesby's
(1679-1749) "Natural History of Carolina and the Bahamas," published
in 1749, with large colored plates which are fairly correct except in
those cases in which the drawing was made from memory.
At about the same time, Hans Sloane (1660-1752) published his large
volume on the "Fishes of Jamaica," Patrick Browne (1720-90) wrote on
the fishes of the same region, while Father Charles Plumier (1646-1704)
made paintings of the fishes of Martinique, long after used by Bloch
and Lacépède. Dr. Alexander Garden (1730-91), of Charleston, S. C.,
collected fishes for Linnæus, as did also Dr. Pehr Kalm in his travels
in the northern parts of the American colonies.
With the revival of interest in general anatomy several naturalists
took up the structure of fishes. Among these Günther mentions Borelli,
Malpighi, Swammerdam, and Duverney. Other anatomists of later dates
were Albrecht von Heller (1708-77), Peter Camper (1722-89), Felix Vicq
d'Azyr (1748-94), and Alexander Monro (1783).
The basis of classification was first fairly recognized by John Ray
(1628-1705) and Francis Willughby (1635-72), who, with other and varied
scientific labors, undertook, in the "Historia Piscium," published
in Oxford in 1686, to bring order out of the confusion left by their
predecessors. This work, edited by Ray after Willughby's death, is
ostensibly the work of Willughby with additions by Ray. In this work
420 species were recorded, 180 of which were actually examined by the
authors, and the arrangement chosen by them pointed the way to a final
system of nomenclature.
Direct efforts in this direction, with a fairly clear recognition of
genera as well as species, were made by Lorenz Theodor Gronow, called
Gronovius, a German naturalist of much acumen, and by Jacob Theodor
Klein (1685-1757), whose work, "Historic Naturalis Piscium," published
about 1745, is of less importance, not being much of an advance over
the catalogue of Rondelet.
Far greater than any of these investigators, and earlier than either
Klein or Gronow, was he who has been justly called the Father of
Ichthyology, Petrus (Peter) Artedi (1705-35). Artedi was born in
Sweden. He was a fellow student of Linnæus at Upsala, and he devoted
his short life wholly to the study of fishes. He went to Holland to
examine the collection of East and West Indian fishes of a rich Dutch
merchant in Amsterdam named Albert Seba, and there at the age of
twenty-nine he was, by accident, drowned in one of the Dutch canals.
"His manuscripts were fortunately rescued by an Englishman, Cliffort,"
and they were edited and published by Linnæus in a series of five parts
or volumes.
Artedi divided the class of fishes into orders, and these orders
again into genera, the genera into species. The name of each species
consisted of that of the genus with a descriptive phrase attached. This
cumbersome system, called polynomial, used by Artedi, Gronow, Klein,
and others, was a great advance on the shifting vernacular, of which
it now took the place. But the polynomial method as a system was of
short duration. Linnæus soon substituted for it the convenient, in fact
inevitable binomial system which has now endured for 150 years, and
which with certain modifications must form the permanent substructure
of the nomenclature in systematic zoology and botany.
The genera of Artedi are in almost all cases natural groups,
corresponding essentially equivalent to the families of to-day.
Families in ichthyology were first clearly recognized and defined by
Cuvier.
The following is a list of Artedi's genera and their arrangement:
ORDER MALACOPTERYGII.
_Syngnathus_ (pipefishes) (4 species).
_Cobitis_ (loaches) (3).
_Cyprinus_ (carp and dace) (19).
_Clupea_ (herrings) (4).
_Argentina_ (argentines) (1).
_Exocoetus_ (flying-fishes) (2).
_Coregonus_ (whitefishes) (4).
_Osmerus_ (smelts) (2).
_Salmo_ (salmon and trout) (10).
_Esox_ (pike) (3).
_Echeneis_ (remoras) (1).
_Coryphæna_ (dolphins) (3).
_Ammodytes_ (sand-launces) (1).
_Pleuronectes_ (flounders) (10).
_Stromateus_ (butter-fishes) (1).
_Gadus_ (codfishes) (11).
_Anarhichas_ (wolf-fishes) (1).
_Muræna_ (eels) (6).
_Ophidion_ (cusk-eels) (2).
_Anableps_ (four-eyed fish) (1).
_Gymnotus_ (carapos) (1).
_Silurus_ (catfishes) (1).
ORDER ACANTHOPTERYGII.
_Blennius_ (blennies) (5).
_Gobius_ (gobies) (4).
_Xiphias_ (swordfishes) (1).
_Scomber_ (mackerels) (5).
_Mugil_ (mullets) (1).
_Labrus_ (wrasses) (9).
_Sparus_ (porgies) (15).
_Sciæna_ (croakers) (2).
_Perca_ (perch and bass) (7).
_Trachinus_ (weavers) (2).
_Trigla_ (gurnards) (10).
_Scorpæna_ (scorpion-fishes) (2).
_Cottus_ (sculpins) (5).
_Zeus_ (john dories, etc.) (3).
_Chætodon_ (butterfly-fishes) (4).
_Gasterosteus_ (sticklebacks) (3).
_Lepturus_ (cutlass-fishes) (=_Trichiurus_) (1).
ORDER BRANCHIOSTEGI.
_Balistes_ (trigger-fishes) (6).
_Ostracion_ (trunkfishes) (22).
_Cyclopterus_ (lumpfishes) (1).
_Lophius_ (anglers) (1).
ORDER CHONDROPTERYGII.
_Petromyzon_ (lampreys) (3).
_Acipenser_ (sturgeons) (2).
_Squalus_ (sharks) (14).
_Raja_ (rays) (11).
In all 47 genera and 230 species of fishes were known from the whole
world in 1738.
The cetaceans, or whales, constitute a fifth order, Plagiuri, in
Artedi's scheme.
As examples of the nomenclature of species I may quote:
"_Zeus ventre aculeato, cauda in extremo circinata._" This polynomial
expression was shortened by Linnæus to _Zeus faber_. The species was
called by Rondelet "_Faber sive Gallus Marinus_" and by other authors
"_Piscis Jovii_." "Jovii" suggested _Zeus_ to Artedi, and Rondelet's
name _faber_ became the specific name.
"_Anarhichas Lupus marinus nostras._" This became with Linnæus
"_Anarhichas lupus_."
"_Clupea, maxilla inferiore longiore, maculis nigris carens: Harengus
vel Chalcis Auctorum, Herring vel Hering Anglis, Germanis Belgis._"
This became _Clupea harengus_ in the convenient binomial system of
Linnæus.
The great naturalist of the eighteenth century, Carl von Linné,
known academically as Carolus Linnæus, was the early associate and
close friend of Artedi, and from Artedi he obtained practically all
his knowledge of fishes. Linnæus, professor in the University of
Upsala and for a time its rector, primarily a botanist, was a man of
wonderful erudition, and his great strength lay in his skill in the
orderly arrangement of things. In his lifetime, his greatest work, the
"Systema Naturæ," passed through twelve editions. In the tenth edition,
in 1758, the binomial system of nomenclature was first consistently
applied to all animals. For this reason most naturalists use the
date of its publication as the beginning of zoological nomenclature,
although the English naturalists have generally preferred the more
complete twelfth edition, published in 1766. This difference in the
recognized starting-point has been often a source of confusion, as in
several cases the names of species were needlessly changed by Linnæus
and given differently in the twelfth edition. In taxonomy it is not
nearly so important that a name be pertinent or even well chosen as
that it be stable. In changing his own established names, the father of
classification set a bad example to his successors, one which they did
not fail to follow.
In Linnæus' system (tenth and twelfth editions) all of Artedi's genera
were retained save _Lepturus_, which name was changed to _Trichiurus_.
The following new genera were added: _Chimæra_, _Tetraodon_,
_Diodon_, _Centriscus_, _Pegasus_, _Callionymus_, _Uranoscopus_,
_Cepola_, _Mullus_, _Teuthis_, _Loricaria_, _Fistularia_, _Atherina_,
_Mormyrus_, _Polynemus_, _Amia_, _Elops_. The classification was
finally much altered: the Chondropterygia and Branchiostegi (with
_Syngnathus_) being called _Amphibia Nantes_, and divided into two
groups--_Spiraculis compositis_ and _Spiraculis solitariis_. The other
fishes were more naturally distributed according to the position of the
ventral fins into Pisces Apodes, Jugulares, Thoracici, and Abdominales.
The Apodes of Linnæus do not form a homogeneous group, as members of
various distinct groups have lost their ventral fins in the process of
evolution. But the Jugulares, the Thoracici, and the Abdominales must
be kept as valid categories in any natural system.
Linnæus' contributions to zoology consisted mainly of the introduction
of his most ingenious and helpful system of bookkeeping. By it
naturalists of all lands were able to speak of the same species by the
same name in whatever tongue. Unfortunately, ignorance, carelessness,
and perversity brought about a condition of confusion. For a long
period many species were confounded under one name. This source of
confusion began with Linnæus himself. On the other hand, even with
Linnæus, the same species often appeared under several different names;
in this matter it was not the system of naming which was at fault. It
was the lack of accurate knowledge, and sometimes the lack of just
and conscientious dealing with the work of other men. No system of
naming can go beyond the knowledge on which it rests. Ignorance of
fact produces confusion in naming. The earlier naturalists had no
conception of the laws of geographical distribution. The "Indies," East
or West, were alike to them, and "America" or "India" or "Africa" was a
sufficiently exact record of the origin of any specimen.
Moreover, no thought of the geological past of groups and species had
yet arisen, and without the conception of common origin, the facts of
homology had no significance. All classification was simply a matter of
arbitrary pigeon-holing the records of forms, rather than an expression
of actual blood relationship. To this confusion much was added
through love of novelty. Different authors changed names to suit their
personal tastes regardless of rights of priority. _Amia_ was altered
to _Amiatus_ by Rafinesque in 1815 because it was too short a name.
_Hiodon_ was changed to _Amphiodon_ because it sounded too much like
_Diodon_, _Batrachoides_ to _Batrictius_ because ~batrachos~ means a
frog, not a fish, and other changes even more wanton were introduced,
to be condemned and discarded by the more methodical workers of a later
period. With all its abuses, however, the binomial nomenclature made
possible systematic zoology and botany, and with the "Systema Naturæ"
arose a new era in the science of living organisms.
In common with most naturalists of his day, the spirit of Linnæus was
essentially a devout one. Admiration for the wonderful works of God was
breathed on almost every page. "O Jehovah! quam ampla sunt opera Tua"
is on the title-page of the "Systema Naturæ," and the inscription over
the door of his home at Hammarby was to Linnæus the wisdom of his life.
This inscription read: "Innocue vivito: Numen adest" (Live blameless:
God is here).
The followers of Linnæus are divided into two classes, explorers and
compilers. To the first class belonged his own students and others
who ransacked all lands for species to be added to the lists of the
"Systema Naturæ." Those men, mostly Scandinavian and Dutch, worked with
wonderful zeal, enduring every hardship and making great contributions
to knowledge, which they published in more or less satisfactory forms.
To these men we owe the beginnings of the science of geographical
distribution. Among the most notable of these are Pehr Osbeck and
Fredrik Hasselquist, already noted; Otto Fabricius (1744-1822), author
of an excellent "Fauna of Greenland"; Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-),
successor of Linnæus as rector of the University of Upsala, who
collected fishes about Nagasaki, intrusting most of the descriptive
work to the less skillful hands of his students, Jonas Nicolas Ahl and
Martin Houttuyn; Martin Th. Brünnich, who collected at Marseilles the
materials for his "Pisces Massiliensis"; Petrus Forskål (1736-63),
whose work on the fishes of the Red Sea ("Descriptio Animalium,"
etc.), published posthumously in 1775, is one of the most accurate
of faunal lists, and one which shows a fine feeling for taxonomic
distinctions scarcely traceable in any previous author. Georg Wilhelm
Steller (1709-45), naturalist of Bering's expedition, gathered amid
incredible hardships the first knowledge of the fishes of Alaska and
Siberia, his notes being printed after his tragic death, by Pallas and
Krascheninnikov. Petrus Simon Pallas (1741-1811) gives the account
of his travels in the North Pacific in his most valuable volumes,
"Zoographia Russo-Asiatica"; Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-55) with Samuel
Theophilus Gmelin (1745-84), and Johann Anton Güldenstädt (1745-91),
like Steller, crossed Siberia, recording its animals. Johann David
Schöpf (1752-1800), a Hessian surgeon stationed at Long Island in the
Revolutionary War, gave an excellent account of the fishes about New
York.
Still other naturalists accompanied navigators around the globe,
collecting specimens and information as opportunity offered. John
Reinhold Forster (1729-98), with his son, John George Adam Forster
(1754-94), and Daniel Solander (1736-81), a student of Linnæus,
and Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), sailed with Captain James Cook.
Philibert Commerson (1727-73) accompanied the explorer, Louis Antoine
de Bougainville, and furnished nearly all the original material used by
Lacépède. Other noted travelers of the early days were Pierre Sonnerat
and Mungo Park.
Still other naturalists, scarcely less useful, gave detailed accounts
of the fauna of their own native regions. Ablest of these was Anatole
Risso, an apothecary of Nice, who published in 1810 the "Ichthyologie
de Nice," an excellent work, afterward (1826) expanded by him into a
"Histoire Naturelle de l'Europe Méridionalé."
Contemporary with Risso was a man of very different character,
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1784-1842), who wrote at Palermo in
1810 his "Caratteri di Alcuni Nuovi Generi" and his "Ittiologia
Siciliana." Later he went to America, where he was for a time professor
in the Transylvania University at Lexington, Ky. Brilliant, erudite,
irresponsible, fantastic, he wrote of the fishes of Sicily and later
("Ichthyologia Ohiensis," 1820) of the fishes of the Ohio River, with
wide knowledge, keen taxonomic insight, and a hopeless disregard of
the elementary principles of accuracy. Always eager for novelties,
restless and credulous, his writings have been among the most difficult
to interpret of any in ichthyology.
Earlier than Risso and Rafinesque, Thomas Pennant (1726-58) wrote of
the British fishes; Otto Fredrik Müller of the fishes of Denmark; J. E.
Gunner, Bishop of Thröndhjem, of fishes of Norway; Francis Valentijn
(1660-1730), Jan Nieuhof (1600-1671), Renard, and Castour of the fishes
of the Dutch East Indies; Duhamel du Monceau of the fisheries of
France; Francesco Cette of the fishes of Sicily; José Cornide of the
fishes of Spain; Ignacio Molina of the fishes of Chile; and Meidinger
of those of Austria. Some of these writers lived before Linnæus. Others
knew little of the Linnæan system, and their records are generally in
the vernacular. Most important of this class is the work of Antonio
Parra, "Descripcion de Diferentes Piezas de Historia Natural de la Isla
de Cuba," published in Havana in 1787. In 1803, Patrick Russell gave
a valuable account, non-binomial, of "Two Hundred Fishes Collected at
Vizagapatam and on the Coast of Coromandel."
Papers on the fishes of Bering Sea and Japan by Wilhelm Theophilus
Tilesius (1775-1835), are published in the transactions of the early
societies of Russia. The collections of the traveler Krusenstern were
recorded by Tilesius. Stephen Krascheninnikov (1786) wrote a history of
Russia in Asia.
Other notable names among the early writers are those of Pierre Marie
Auguste Broussonet, of Montpelier, whose work (1780), too soon cut
short, showed marked promise; Fr. Faber, who wrote of the fishes of
Iceland; E. Blyth, who studied the fishes of the Andamans; A. G.
Desmarest, who made excellent studies of the fishes of Cuba; J. T.
Kölreuter and Everard Home in the East Indies; Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire,
who recorded the fishes of Egypt at the command of Napoleon. Others
equally notable were B. A. Euphrasen, Iwan Lepechin (1750-1802), John
Latham, W. E. Leach, George Montagu, C. Quensel, Jean-Antoine Scopoli,
Peter Ascanius, Francois Etienne de la Roche (1789-1812), Hans Ström,
M. Vahl and Zuieuw.
The compilers who followed Linnæus belonged to a wholly different
class. These were men of extensive learning, methodical ways,
sometimes brilliant, occasionally of deep insight, but more often, on
the whole, dull, plodding, and mechanical.
Earliest of those is Antoine Gouan, whose "Historia Piscium" was
published in Paris in 1770. In this work, which is of fair quality,
only genera were included, and the three new ones which he introduces
into the "System" (_Lepadogaster_, _Lepidopus_, and _Trachypterus_) are
still retained with his definition of them.
Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1748-1804), a relative of the explorers of
Siberia, published in 1788 a thirteenth edition of the "Systema Naturæ"
of Linnæus, adding to it the discoveries of Forskål, Forster, and
others who had written since Linnæus' time. This work was useful as
bringing the compilation of Linnæus to a later date, but it is not well
done, the compiler having little knowledge of the animals described and
little penetration in matters of taxonomy. Very similar in character,
although more lucid in expression, is the French compilation of the
same date (1788), "Tableau Encyclopédique et Méthodique des Trois
Règnes de la Nature," by the Abbé J. P. Bonnaterre. Another volume of
the "Encyclopédie Méthodique," of still less merit, was published as a
dictionary in Paris in 1787 by Réné Just Haüy. Another dictionary in
1817 even poorer was the work of Hippolyte Cloquet.
In 1792, Johann Julius Walbaum (1721-1800), a German compiler of a
little higher rank, gathered together the records of all known species,
using the work of Artedi as a basis and giving binominal names in
place of the vernacular terms used by Schöpf, Steller, Pennant, and
Krascheninnikov.
Far more pretentious and more generally useful, as well as containing
a large amount of original material, is the "Ichthyologia" of
Mark Eliezer Bloch, published in Berlin in various parts from
1782 to 1785. It was originally in German and divided into two
portions--"Oeconomische Naturgeschichte der Fische Deutschlands"
and "Naturgeschichte der auslandischen Fische." Bloch was a Jewish
physician, born at Anspach in 1723, and at the age of fifty-six began
to devote himself to ichthyology. In his great work is contained every
species which he had himself seen, every one which he could purchase
from collections, and every one of which he could find drawings made by
others.
That part which relates to the fishes of Germany is admirably done.
In the treatment of East Indian and American fishes there is much
guesswork and many errors of description and of fact, for which the
author was not directly responsible. To learn to interpret the personal
equation in the systematic work of other men is one of the most
delicate of taxonomic arts.
After the publication of these great folio volumes of plates, Dr.
Bloch began a systematic catalogue to include all known species. This
was published after his death by his collaborator, the philologist,
Dr. Johann Gottlob Schneider. This work, "M. E. Blochii Systema
Ichthyologia," contains 1519 species of fishes, and is the most
creditable compilation subsequent to the death of Linnæus.
Even more important than the work of Bloch is that of the Comte de La
Cépède, who became with the progress of the French Revolution, "Citoyen
Lacépède," his original full name being Bernard Germain Etienne de
la Ville-sur-Illon, Comte de La Cépède. His great work, "Histoire
Naturelle des Poissons," was published originally in five volumes, in
Paris, from 1798 to 1803. It was brought out under great difficulties,
his materials being scattered, his country in a constant tumult. For
original material he depended largely on the collections and sagacious
notes of the traveler Commerson. Dr. Gill sums up the strength and
weakness of Lacépède's work in these terms:
"A work by an able man and eloquent writer even prone to aid rhetoric
by the aid of the imagination in absence of desirable facts, but
which because of undue confidence in others, default of comparison of
material from want thereof and otherwise, and carelessness generally is
entirely unreliable."
The work of Lacépède had a great influence upon subsequent
investigators, especially in France. A considerable number of the
numerous new genera of Rafinesque were founded on divisions made in the
analytical keys of Lacépède.
[Illustration: BERNARD GERMAIN DE LACÉPÈDE.
GEORGES DAGOBERT CUVIER.
LOUIS AGASSIZ.
JOHANNES MÜLLER.]
In 1803 and 1804, Dr. George Shaw published in London his "General
Zoology," the fishes forming part of volumes IV and V. This is a poor
compilation, the part concerning the fishes being mostly extracted from
Bloch and Lacépède. Another weak compilation for the supposed use of
students was the "Ichthyologie Analytique" of A. M. Constant Duméril.
About 1815, Henri Ducrotay de Blainville wrote the "Faune Française"
and contributed important studies to the taxonomy of sharks.
With Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (1769-1832)
and the "Règne Animal arrangé aprés son Organization" (1817; 1829-30)
we have the beginning of a new era in ichthyology. This period
is characterized by a recognition of the existence of a natural
classification inevitable in proportion to the exactness of our
knowledge, because based on the principles of morphology. The "Règne
Animal" is, in the history of ichthyology, not less important than the
"Systema Naturæ" itself, and from it dates practically our knowledge
of families of fishes and the interrelations of the different groups.
The great facts of homology were clearly understood by Cuvier. Their
significance as indications of lines of descent were never grasped by
him, and this notwithstanding the fact that Cuvier was almost the first
to bring extinct forms into proper relations with those now living.
Dr. Günther well says that the investigation of anatomy of fishes was
continued by Cuvier until he had succeeded in completing so perfect
a framework of the system of the whole class that his immediate
successors could content themselves with filling up those details for
which their master had no leisure. Indefatigable in examining all the
external and internal characters of the fishes of a rich collection, he
ascertained the natural affinities of the infinite variety of fishes,
and accurately defined the divisions, orders, families, and genera of
the class as they appear in the two original editions of the "Règne
Animal." His industry equaled his genius; he opened connections with
almost every accessible part of the globe; not only French travelers
and naturalists, but also Germans, Englishmen, Americans rivaled one
another to assist him with collections; and for many years the Museum
of the Jardin des Plantes was the Center where all ichthyological
treasures were deposited. Thus Cuvier brought together a collection the
like of which had never been seen before, and which, as it contains all
the materials on which his labors were based, must still be considered
to be one of the most important in existence.
"Those little low rooms, five in number" (in the museum of the Jardin
des Plantes), "they should be the Mecca of scientific devotees. Perhaps
every great zoologist of the past hundred years has sat in them and
discussed those problems of life which are always inviting solution and
are never solved. The spirits of great naturalists still haunt these
corridors and speak from the specimens their hands have set in order."
(THEODORE LYMAN.)
Cuvier's studies of the different species of fishes are contained in
the great "Histoire Naturelle des Poissons," the joint work of Cuvier
and his pupil and successor, Achille Valenciennes (1794-1865). Of this
work 22 volumes were published, from 1828 to 1849, containing 4514
nominal species, the greater portion being written after the death of
Cuvier (1832). The work was finally left unfinished on account of a
disagreement with the publisher. Dr. Gill tells me that at this time
Valenciennes made an unsuccessful appeal to the Smithsonian Institution
for assistance in the publication of the remaining chapters.
This is a most masterly work, indispensable to the student of fishes.
Its descriptions are generally fairly correct, its plates accurate,
and its judgments trustworthy. But with all this it is very unequal.
Too often nominal species are based on variations due to age or sex or
to the conditions of preservation of specimens. Many of the species
are treated very lightly by Cuvier; many of the descriptions of
Valenciennes are very mechanical, as though the author had grown weary
of the endless process, "a failing commonly observed among zoologists
when attention to descriptive details becomes to them a tedious task."
After the death of Valenciennes (1865) Dr. Auguste Duméril began
another Natural History of the Fishes. Of this two volumes (1865-70)
were published covering sharks, ganoids, and other fishes not treated
by Cuvier and Valenciennes, his category beginning at the opposite
end of the fish series. The death of Duméril left this catalogue also
unfinished. Duméril's work is useful and carefully done, but his
excessive trust in slight differences has filled his book with nominal
species. Thus among the living ganoid fishes he recognizes 135 species,
the actual number being not far from 40.
We may anticipate the sequence of time by here referring to the
remaining attempts at a record of all the fishes in the world, Dr.
Albert C. L. G. Günther, a naturalist of German birth, but resident in
London for many years, long the honored keeper of the British Museum,
published in eight volumes the "Catalogue of the Fishes of the British
Museum," from 1859 to 1870. In this monumental work, the one work most
essential to all systematic study of fishes, 6843 species are described
and 1682 doubtful species are mentioned. The book is a remarkable
example of patient industry. Its great merits are at once apparent, and
those of us engaged in the same line of study may pass by its faults
with the leniency which we may hope that posterity may bestow on ours.
The publication of this work gave an immediate impetus to the study of
fishes. The number of known species has been raised from 9000 to about
12,000 in the last thirty years, although meanwhile some hundreds of
species even accepted by the conservatism of Günther have been erased
from the system.
A new edition of this work has been long in contemplation, and
in 1898 the first volume of it, covering the percoid fishes, was
published by Dr. George Albert Boulenger. This volume is one of the
most satisfactory in the history of ichthyology. It is based on
ample material. Its accepted species have been subject to thorough
criticism and in its classification every use has been made of the
teachings of morphology and especially of osteology. Its classification
is distinctly modern, and with the writings of the contemporary
ichthyologists of Europe and America, it is fully representative of
the scientific era ushered in by the researches of Darwin. The chief
criticism which one may apply to this work concerns most of the
publications of the British Museum. It is the frequent assumption that
those species not found in the greatest museum of the world do not
really exist at all. There are still many forms of life, very many,
outside the series gathered in any or all collections.
[Illustration: ALBERT GÜNTHER.
FRANZ STEINDACHNER.
GEORGE A. BOULENGER.
ROBERT COLLETT.]
We may now turn from the universal catalogues to the work on special
groups, on local faunas, or on particular branches of the subject of
ichthyology. These lines of study were made possible by the work of
Cuvier and Valenciennes and especially by that of Dr. Günther.
Before taking up the students of faunal groups, we may, out of
chronological order, consider the researches of three great
taxonomists, who have greatly contributed to the modern system of the
classification of fishes.
Louis Agassiz (born at Motiers in western Switzerland in 1807; died at
Cambridge, Mass., in 1873) was a man of wonderful insight in zoological
matters and possessed of a varied range of scientific information,
scarcely excelled in any age--intellectually a lineal descendant of
Aristotle. His first work on fishes was the large folio on the fishes
collected by Jean Baptiste Spix (1781-1826) in Brazil, published at
Munich in 1827. After his establishment in America in 1846, soon after
which date, he became a professor in Harvard University, Agassiz
published a number of illuminating papers on the fresh-water fishes
of North America. He was the first to recognize the necessity of the
modern idea of genera among fishes, and most of the groups designated
by him as distinct genera are retained by later writers. He was also
the first to investigate the structure of the singular viviparous
surf-fishes of California, the names _Embiotoca_ and _Holconotus_
applied to these fishes being chosen by him.
His earlier work, "Recherches sur les Poissons des Eaux Douces,"
published in Europe, gave a great impetus to our knowledge of the
anatomy and especially of the embryology of the fresh-water fishes.
Most important of all his zoological publications was the "Recherches
sur les Poissons Fossiles," published at Neufchatel from 1833 to 1843.
This work laid the foundation of the systematic study of the extinct
groups of fishes. The relations of sharks were first appreciated by
Agassiz, and the first segregation of the ganoids was due to him.
Although he included in this group many forms not truly related either
to anything now called ganoids, nor even to the extinct mailed forms
which preceded them, yet the definition of this order marked a distinct
step in advance.
The great, genial, hopeful personality of Agassiz and his remarkable
skill as a teacher made him the "best friend that ever student had"
and gave him a large following as a teacher. Among his pupils in
ichthyology were Charles Girard (1822-1895), Frederick Ward Putnam,
Alexander Agassiz, Samuel Garman, Samuel H. Scudder, and the present
writer.
Johannes Müller (1808-1858), of Berlin, was one of the greatest
of comparative anatomists. In his revision of Cuvier's "System of
Classification" he corrected many errors in grouping, and laid
foundations which later writers have not altered or removed. Especially
important is his classical work, "Ueber den Bau and die Grenzen der
Ganoiden." In this he showed some of the real fundamental characters of
that group of archaic fishes, and took from it the most heterogeneous
of the elements left in it by Agassiz. To Müller we also owe the first
proper definition of the Leptocardii and the Cyclostomata, and, in
association with Dr. J. Henle, Müller has given us one of the best
general accounts of the sharks ("Systematische Beschriebungen der
Plagiostomen"). To Müller we owe an accession of knowledge in regard
to the duct of the air-bladder, and the groups called Physostomi,
Physoclysti, Dipneusti (Dipnoi), Pharyngognathi, and Anacanthini were
first defined by him.
In his work on Devonian fishes, the great British comparative
anatomist, Thomas Henry Huxley, first distinguished the group of
Crossopterygians, and separated it from the ganoids and dipnoans.
Theodore Nicholas Gill is the keenest interpreter of taxonomic facts
yet known in the history of ichthyology. He is the author of a vast
number of papers, the first bearing date of 1858, touching almost every
group and almost every phase of relation among fishes. His numerous
suggestions as to classification have been usually accepted in time
by other authors, and no one has had a clearer perception than he of
the necessity of orderly methods in nomenclature. Among the orders
first defined by Gill are the Eventognathi, Nematognathi, Pediculati,
Iniomi, Heteromi, Haplomi, Xenomi, and the group called Teleocephali,
originally framed to include all the bony fishes except those which
showed peculiar eccentricities or modifications. Dr. Gill's greatest
excellence has been shown as a scientific critic. Incisive, candid, and
friendly, there is scarcely an investigator in biology, in America,
who is not directly indebted to him for critical aid of the highest
importance. The present writer cannot too strongly express his own
obligations to this great teacher, his master in fish taxonomy. Dr.
Gill's work is not centered in any single great treatise, but is
diffused through a very large number of brief papers and catalogues,
those from 1861 to 1865 mostly published by the Academy of Natural
Sciences in Philadelphia, those of recent date by the United States
National Museum. For many years Dr. Gill has been identified with the
work of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.
Closely associated with Dr. Gill was Dr. Edward Drinker Cope, of
Philadelphia, a tireless worker in almost every field of zoology, and
a large contributor to the broader fields of ichthyological taxonomy
as well as to various branches of descriptive zoology. Cope was one
of the first to insist on the close relation of the true ganoids with
the teleost fishes, the nearest related group of which he defined
as Isospondyli. At the same time he recognized the wide range of
difference even among the forms which Johannes Müller had assembled
under that name. In breadth of vision and keenness of insight, Cope
ranked with the first of taxonomic writers. Always bold and original,
he was not at all times accurate in details, and to the final result in
classification his contribution has been less than that of Dr. Gill.
Professor Cope also wrote largely on American fresh-water fishes, a
large percentage of the Cyprinidæ and Percidæ of the eastern United
States having been discovered by him, as well as much of the Rocky
Mountain fauna. In later years his attention was absorbed by the fossil
forms, and most of the species of Cretaceous rocks and the Eocene
shales of Wyoming were made known through his ceaseless activity.
[Illustration: SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD.
EDWARD DRINKER COPE.
THEODORE NICHOLAS GILL.
GEORGE BROWN GOODE.]
The enumeration of other workers in the great field of ichthyology
must assume something of the form of a catalogue. Part of the impulse
received from the great works of Cuvier and Valenciennes and of Günther
was spent in connection with voyages of travel. In 1824 Quoy and
Gaimard published in Paris the great folio work on the fishes collected
by the corvette _l'Uranie_ and _la Physicienne_ in Freycinet's voyages
around the world, and in 1834 the same authors published the fishes
collected in Duperrey's voyage of the _Astrolabe_. In 1826 Lesson
published the fishes of Dumont D'Urville's voyage of the _Coquille_.
These three great works lie at the foundation of our knowledge of
the fishes of Polynesia. In 1839 Eydoux and Gervais published an
account of the fishes of the voyage of _La Favorite_. In 1853, also in
Paris, Hombron and Jacquinot gave an account of the fishes taken in
Dumont D'Urville's expedition to the South Pole. In England, Sir John
Richardson (1787-1865), a wise and careful naturalist, wrote of the
fishes collected by the _Sulphur_ (1845), the _Erebus_ and _Terror_
(1846), the _Samarang_, and the _Herald_. Lay and Bennett recorded
the species taken by Beechey's voyage on the _Blossom_. A most useful
work is the account of the species taken by Charles Darwin on the
voyage of the _Beagle_, prepared by the conscientious hand of Rev.
Leonard Jenyns. Still more important and far ranging is the voyage
of the _Challenger_, including the first important work in the deep
seas, one stately volume and parts of other volumes on fishes being
the work of Dr. Günther. Other deep-sea work of equal importance has
been accomplished in the Atlantic and the Pacific by the U. S. Fish
Commission steamer _Albatross_. Its results in Central America, Alaska,
Japan, Hawaii, as well as off both coasts of the United States, have
been made known in different memoirs by Goode and Bean, Gilbert,
Garman, Gill, Jordan, Cramer, Ryder, and others. The deep-sea fish
collections of the _Fish Hawk_ and the _Blake_ have been studied by
Goode and Bean and Garman.
The deep-sea work of other countries may be briefly noticed. The French
vessels _Travailleur_ and _Talisman_ have made collections chiefly in
the Mediterranean and along the coast of Africa, the results having
been made known by Léon Valliant. The _Hirondelle_ about the Azores and
elsewhere has furnished material for Professor Robert Collett, of the
University of Christiania. Dr. Decio Vinciguerra, of Rome, has reported
on the collections of the _Violante_, a vessel belonging to the Prince
of Monaco. Dr. A. Alcock, of Calcutta, has had charge of the most
valuable deep-sea work of the _Investigator_ in the Indian Seas. Edgar
R. Waite and James Douglas Ogilby, of the Australian Museum at Sydney,
have described the collections of the _Thetis_, on the shores of the
New South Wales.
[Illustration: JOHANN REINHARDT.
EDWARD WALLER CLAYPOLE.
CARLOS BERG.
EDGAR R. WAITE.]
From Austria the voyage of the frigate _Novara_ has yielded large
material which has been described by Dr. Rudolph Kner. The cream of
many voyages of many Danish merchant vessels has been gathered in
the "Spolia Atlantica" and other truly classical papers of Christian
Frederik Lütken, of the University of Copenhagen, one of the most
accomplished naturalists of recent times.
F. H. von Kittlitz has written on the fishes seen by him in the
northern Pacific, and earlier and more important we may mention the
many ichthyological notes found in the records of travel in Mexico and
South America by Alexander von Humboldt (1796-1859).
The local faunal work in various nations has been very extensive. In
Great Britain we may note Parnell's "Natural History of the Fishes of
the Firth of Forth," published in Edinburgh in 1838, William Yarrell's
"History of British Fishes" (1859), the earlier histories of British
fishes by Edward Donovan and by William Turton, and the works of J.
Couch (1862) and Dr. Francis Day (1888), possessing similar titles.
The work of Day, with its excellent plates, will long be the standard
account of the relatively scant fish fauna of the British islands.
H. G. Seeley has prepared (1886) also a useful synopsis of "The
Fresh-water Fishes of Europe."
We may here notice without praise the pretentious work of William
Swainson (1838-39). W. Thompson has written of the fishes of Ireland,
and Rev. Richard T. Lowe and J. Y. Johnson have done most excellent
work on the fishes of Madeira. F. McCoy, better known for work on
fossil fishes, may be mentioned here.
The fish fauna of Scandinavia has been described more or less fully
by S. Kröyer (1840), Robert Nilsson (1855), Fries and Ekström (1836),
Robert Collett, Robert Lilljeborg, and F. A. Smitt, besides special
papers by other writers, notably Reinhardt, L. Esmarck, Japetus
Steenstrup, Lütken, and A. W. Malm. Reinhardt, Kröyer, Lütken, and
A. J. Malmgren have written of the Arctic fishes of Greenland and
Spitzbergen.
In Russia, Nordmann has described the fishes of the Black Sea
("Ichthyologic Pontique," Paris, 1840) and Eichwald those of the
Caspian. More recently, S. Herzenstein, Warpachowsky, K. Kessler, B.
N. Dybowsky, and others have written of the rich fauna of Siberia, the
Caucasus, and the scarcely known sea of Ochotsk. Stephan Basilevsky has
written of the fishes of northern China. A. Kowalevsky has contributed
very much to our knowledge of anatomy. Peter Schmidt has studied the
fishes of the Japan Sea.
In Germany and Austria the chief local works have been those of Heckel
and Kner on the fresh-water fishes of Austria (1858) and C. Th. von
Siebold on the fresh-water fishes of Central Europe (1863). German
ichthyologists have, however, often extended their view to foreign
regions where their characteristic thoroughness and accuracy has made
their work illuminating. The two memoirs of Eduard Rüppell on the
fishes of the Red Sea and the neighboring parts of Africa, "Atlas
zu der Reise im Nördlichen Afrika," 1828, and "Neue Wirbelthiere,"
1837, rank with the very best of descriptive literature. Günther's
illustrated "Fische der Südsee," published in Hamburg, may be regarded
as German work. The excellent colored plates are mostly from the hand
of Andrew Garrett. Other papers are those of Dr. Wilhelm Peters on
Asiatic fishes, the most important being on the fishes of Mozambique.
J. J. Heckel, Rudolph Kner, and Franz Steindachner, successively
directors of the Museum at Vienna, have written largely on fishes. The
papers of Steindachner cover almost every part of the earth and are
absolutely essential to any systematic study of fishes. No naturalist
of any land has surpassed Steindachner in industry or accuracy, and his
work has the advantage of the best illustrations of fishes made by any
artist, the noted Eduard Konopicky. In association with Dr. Döderlein,
formerly of Tokyo, Dr. Steindachner has given an excellent account
of the fishes of Japan. Other German writers are J. J. Kaup, who has
worked in numerous fields, but as a whole with little skill, Dr. S.
B. Klunzinger, who has given excellent accounts of the fishes of the
Red Sea, and Dr. Franz Hilgendorf, of the University of Berlin, whose
papers on the fishes of Japan and other regions have shown a high grade
of taxonomic insight. A writer of earlier date is W. L. von Rapp, who
wrote on the "Fische den Bodensees." J. F. Brandt has written of the
sturgeons of Russia, and Johann Marcusen, to whom we owe much of our
knowledge, of the Mormyri of Africa.
In Italy, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, has published an
elaborate "Fauna Italica" (1838) and in numerous minor papers has taken
a large part in the development of ichthyology. Many of the accepted
names of the large groups (as Elasmobranchii, Heterosomata, etc.) were
first suggested by Bonaparte. The work of Rafinesque has been already
noticed. O. G. Costa published (about 1850) a "Fauna of Naples." In
recent times Camillo Ranzani, of Bologna, wrote on the fishes of Brazil
and of the Mediterranean. Giovanni Canestrini, Decio Vinciguerra,
Enrico Hillyer Giglioli, Luigi Döderlein, and others have contributed
largely to our knowledge of Italian fishes, while Carlo F. Emery, F.
de Filippi, Luigi Facciolá, and others have studied the larval growth
of different species. Camillo Ranzani, G. G. Bianconi, Domenico Nardo,
Cristoforo Bellotti, Alberto Perugia, and others have contributed to
different fields of ichthyology.
Nicholas Apostolides and, still later, Horace A. Hoffman and the
present writer, have written of the fishes of Greece.
In France, the fresh-water fishes are the subject of an important work
by Emile Blanchard (1866), and Emile Moreau has given us a convenient
account of the fish fauna of France. Léon Vaillant has written on
various groups of fishes, his monograph of the American darters
(Etheostominæ) being a masterpiece so far as the results of the study
of relatively scanty material would permit. The "Mission Scientifique
au Mexique," by Valliant and F. Bocourt, is one of the most valuable
contributions to our knowledge of the fishes of that region. Dr. H. E.
Sauvage, of Boulogne-sur-Mer, has also written largely on the fishes
of Asia, Africa, and other regions. Among the most important of these
are the "Poissons de Madagascar," and a monograph of the sticklebacks.
Alexander Thominot and Jacques Pellegrin have also written, in the
Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, on different groups of fishes.
Earlier writers were Constant Duméril, Alphonse Guichenot, L. Brissot
de Barneville, H. Hollard, an able anatomist, and Bibron, an associate
of Auguste Duméril.
[Illustration: FELIPE POEY Y ALOY.
LÉON VAILLANT.
LOUIS DOLLO.
DECIO VINCIGUERRA.]
In Spain and Portugal the chief work of local authors is that of J.
V. B. Bocage and F. de Brito Capello on the fishes of Portugal. So
far as the fishes of Spain are concerned, the most valuable memoir
is Steindachner's account of his travels in Spain and Portugal.
The principal studies of the Balkan region have also been made by
Steindachner. José Gogorza y González, of the Museum of Madrid, has
given a list of the fishes of the Philippines. A still more elaborate
list, praiseworthy as a beginning, is the work of the Reverend Padre
Casto de Elera, professor of Natural History in the Dominican College
of Santo Tomas in Manila.
In Holland, the chief great works have been those of Schlegel and
Pieter van Bleeker. Professor H. Schlegel, of the University of Leyden,
described the fishes collected about Nagasaki by Ph. Fr. de Siebold and
Bürger. His work on fishes forms a large folio illustrated by colored
plates, a volume of the "Fauna Japonica," published in Leyden from 1843
to 1847. Schlegel's work in every field is characterized by scrupulous
care and healthful conservatism, and the "Fauna Japonica" is a most
useful monument to his rare powers of discrimination.
Pieter von Bleeker (1819-78), a surgeon in the Dutch East Indies,
is the most voluminous writer in ichthyology. He began his work in
Java without previous training and in a very rich field where almost
everything was new. With many mistakes at first he rose to the front by
sheer force of industry and patience, and his later work, while showing
much of the "personal equation," is still thoroughly admirable. At his
death he was engaged in the publication of a magnificent folio work,
"Atlas Ichthyologique des Indes Orientales Neerlandaises," illustrated
by colored plates. This work remains about two-thirds completed. The
writings of Dr. Bleeker constitute the chief source of our knowledge of
the fauna of the East Indies.
Dr. Van Lidth de Jeude, of the University of Leyden, is the author of a
few descriptive papers on fishes.
To Belgium we may assign part at least of the work of the eminent
Belgian naturalist, George Albert Boulenger, now long connected with
the British Museum. His various valuable papers on the fishes of the
Congo are published under the auspices of the "Congo Free State." To
Belgium also we may ascribe the work of Louis Dollo on the morphology
of fishes and on the deep-sea fishes obtained by the "Expedition
Antarctique Belge."
The fish fauna of Cuba has been the lifelong study of Dr. Felipe Poey
y Aloy (1799-1891), a pupil of Cuvier, for a half century or more
the honored professor of zoology in the University of Havana. Of
his many useful papers, the most extensive are his "Memorias sobre
la Historia Natural de la Isla de Cuba," followed by a "Repertorio"
and an "Enumeratio" in which the fishes are elaborately catalogued.
Poey devoted himself solely to the rich fish fauna of his native
island, in which region he was justly recognized as a ripe scholar
and a broad-minded gentleman. A favorite expression of his was "Comme
naturaliste, je ne suis pas espagnol: je suis cosmopolite." Before
Poey, Guichenot, of Paris, had written on the fishes collected in Cuba
by Ramon de la Sagra (1810-60). His account was published in Sagra's
"Historia de Cuba," and later Philip H. Gosse (1810-1888) wrote on the
fishes of Jamaica. Much earlier, Robert Hermann Schomburgk (1804-65)
wrote on the fishes of British Guiana. Other papers on the Caribbean
fishes were contributed by Johannes Müller and F. H. Troschel, and by
Richard Hill and J. Hancock.
Besides the work in South America of Marcgraf, Agassiz, Reinhardt,
Lütken, Steindachner, Jenyns, Boulenger, and others already named,
we may note the local studies of Dr. Carlos Berg in Argentina, Dr.
R. A. Philippi, and Frederico T. Delfin in Chile, Miranda-Ribeiro in
Brazil, with Garman, J. F. Abbott, and others in recent times. Carl
H. Eigenmann and earlier Jordan and Eigenmann have studied the great
collections made in Brazil by Agassiz. Steindachner has described
the collections of Johann Natterer and Gilbert those made by Dr.
John Casper Branner. The most recent examinations of the myriads of
Brazilian river fishes have been made by Dr. Eigenmann. Earlier than
any of these (1855), Francis de Castelnau (1800-65) described many
Brazilian fishes and afterwards numerous fishes of Australia and
southern Africa, Alphonse Guichenot, of Paris, contributed a chapter
on fishes to Claude Gay's (1800-63) "History of Chile," and J. J. von
Tschudi, of St. Gallen, published an elaborate but uncritical "Fauna
Peruana" with colored plates of Peruvian fishes.
In New Zealand, F. W. Hutton and J. Hector have published a valuable
work on the fishes of New Zealand, to which Dr. Gill added useful
critical notes in a study of "Antipodal Faunas." Later writers have
given us a good knowledge of the fishes of Australia. Notable among
them are Charles DeVis, William Macleay, H. de Miklouho-Maclay, James
Douglas Ogilby, and Edgar R. Waite. Clarke has also written on "Fishes
of New Zealand."
The most valuable work on the fishes of Hindustan is the elaborate
treatise on the "Fishes of India" by Surgeon Francis Day. In this all
the species are figured, the groups being arranged as in Günther's
catalogue, a sequence which few non-British naturalists seem inclined
to follow. Cantor's "Malayan Fishes" is a memoir of high merit, as is
also McClelland's work on Indian fishes and the still earlier work of
Francis Buchanan Hamilton on the fishes of the Ganges. We may here
refer to Andrew Smith's papers on the fishes of the Cape of Good Hope
and to R. I. Playfair and A. Günther's "Fishes of Zanzibar." T. C.
Jerdon, John Edward Gray, E. Tyrwhitt Bennett, and others have also
written on the fishes of India; J. C. Bennett has published several
excellent papers on the fishes of Polynesia and the East Indies.
In Japan, following the scattering papers of Thunberg, Tilesius, and
Houttuyn, and the monumental work of Schlegel, numerous species have
been recorded by James Carson Brevoort, Günther, Gill, Eduard Nyström,
Hilgendorf, and others. About 1884 Steindachner and Döderlein published
the valuable "Fische Japans," based on the collections made about Tokyo
by Dr. Döderlein. In 1881, Motokichi Namiye, then assistant curator in
the Imperial University, published the first list of Japanese fishes
by a native author. In 1900, Dr. Chiyomatsu Ishikawa, on the "Fishes
of Lake Biwa," was the first Japanese author to venture to name a
new species of fish (_Pseudogobio zezera_). This reticence was due
not wholly to lack of self-confidence, but rather to the scattered
condition of the literature of Japanese ichthyology. For this reason no
Japanese author has ever felt that any given undetermined species was
really new. Other Japanese ichthyologists of promise are Dr. Kamakichi
Kishinouye, in charge of the Imperial fisheries Bureau, Dr. Shinnosuke
Matsubara, director of the Imperial Fisheries Institute, Keinosuke
Otaki, S. Hatta, S. Nozawa, T. Kitahara, and Michitaro Sindo, and we
may look for others among the pupils of Dr. Kakichi Mitsukuri, the
distinguished professor of zoology in the Imperial University.
[Illustration: BASHFORD DEAN.
KAKICHI MITSUKURI.
CARL H. EIGENMANN.
FRANZ HILGENDORF.]
The most recent, as well as the most extensive, studies of the fishes
of Japan were made in 1999 by the present writer and his associate,
John Otterbein Snyder.
The scanty pre-Cuvieran work on the fishes of North America has
been already noticed. Contemporary with the early work of Cuvier is
the worthy attempt of Professor Samuel Latham Mitchill (1764-1831)
to record in systematic fashion the fishes of New York. Soon after
followed the admirable work of Charles Alexandre Le Sueur (1789-1840),
artist and naturalist, who was the first to study the fishes of the
Great Lakes and the basin of the Ohio. Le Sueur's engravings of
fishes, in the early publications of the Academy of Natural Sciences
in Philadelphia, are still among the most satisfactory representations
of the species to which they refer. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
(1784-1842), the third of this remarkable but very dissimilar trio,
published numerous papers descriptive of the species he had seen or
heard of in his various botanical rambles. This culminated in his
elaborate but untrustworthy "Ichthyologia Ohiensis." The fishes of
Ohio received later a far more conscientious though less brilliant
treatment at the hands of Dr. Jared Potter Kirtland (1793-1877), an
eminent physician of Cleveland, Ohio. In 1842 the amiable and scholarly
James Ellsworth Dekay (1799-1851) published his detailed report on
the fishes of the "New York Fauna," and a little earlier (1836) in
the "Fauna Boreali-Americana" Sir John Richardson (1787-1865) gave a
most valuable and accurate account of the fishes of the Great Lakes
and Canada. Almost simultaneously, Rev. Zadock Thompson (1796-1856)
gave a catalogue of the fishes of Vermont, and David Humphreys Storer
(1804-91) began his work on the fishes of Massachusetts, finally
expanded into a "Synopsis of the Fishes of North America" (1846) and a
"History of the Fishes of Massachusetts" (1853-67). Dr. John Edwards
Holbrook (1794-1871), of Charleston, published (1855-60) his invaluable
record of the fishes of South Carolina, the promise of still more
important work, which was prevented by the outbreak of the Civil War
in the United States. The monograph on Lake Superior (1850) and other
publications of Louis Agassiz (1807-73) have been already noticed.
One of the first of Agassiz's students was Charles Girard (1822-95),
who came with him from Switzerland, and, in association with Spencer
Fullerton Baird (1823-87), described the fishes from the United States
Pacific Railway Surveys (1858) and the United States and Mexican
Boundary Surveys (1859). Professor Baird, primarily an ornithologist,
became occupied with executive matters, leaving Girard to finish these
studies of the fishes. A large part of the work on fishes published by
the United States National Museum and the United States Fish Commission
has been made possible through the direct help and inspiration of
Professor Baird. Among those engaged in this work, James William Milner
(1841-80), Marshall Macdonald (1836-95), and Hugh M. Smith may be noted.
Most eminent, however, among the students and assistants of Professor
Baird was his successor, George Brown Goode (1851-96), one of the most
accomplished of American naturalists, whose greatest work, "Oceanic
Ichthyology," published in collaboration with his long associate, Dr.
Tarleton Hoffman Bean, was barely finished at the time of his death.
The work of Theodore Nicholas Gill and Edward Drinker Cope has been
already noticed.
Other faunal writers of more or less prominence were William Dandridge
Peck (1763-1822) in New Hampshire, George Suckley (1830-69) in Oregon,
James William Milner (1841-80) in the Great Lake Region, Samuel Stehman
Haldeman (1812-80) in Pennsylvania, William O. Ayres (1817-91) in
Connecticut and California; Dr. John G. Cooper (died 1902), Dr. William
P. Gibbons and Dr. William N. Lockington (died 1902) in California;
Philo Romayne Hoy (1816-93) studied the fishes of Wisconsin, Charles
Conrad Abbott those of New Jersey, Silas Stearns (1859-88) those of
Florida, Stephen Alfred Forbes and Edward W. Nelson those of Illinois,
Oliver Perry Hay, later known for his work on fossil forms, those of
Mississippi, Alfredo Dugés, of Guanajuato, those of Central Mexico.
Samuel Garman, at Harvard University, a student of Agassiz, is the
author of numerous valuable papers, the most notable being on the
sharks and on the deep-sea collections of the _Albatross_ in the
Galapagos region, the last illustrated by plates of most notable
excellence. Other important monographs of Garman treat of the
Cyprinodonts and the Discoboli.
The present writer began a "Systematic Catalogue of the Fishes of
North America" in 1875 in association with his gifted friend, Herbert
Edson Copeland (1849-76), whose sudden death, after a few promising
beginnings, cut short the undertaking. Later, Charles Henry Gilbert
(1860-), a student of Professor Copeland, took up the work and in 1883
a "Synopsis of the Fishes of North America" was completed by Jordan and
Gilbert. Later, Dr. Gilbert has been engaged in studies of the fishes
of Panama, Alaska, and other regions, and the second and enlarged
edition of the "Synopsis" was completed in 1898, as the "Fishes of
North and Middle America," in collaboration with another of the
writer's students, Dr. Barton Warren Evermann. A monographic review of
the Fishes of Puerto Rico was later (1900) completed by Dr. Evermann,
together with numerous minor works. Other naturalists whom the writer
may be proud to claim as students are Charles Leslie McKay (1854-83),
drowned in Bristol Bay, Alaska, while engaged in explorations, and
Charles Henry Bollman (1868-89), stricken with fever in the Okefinokee
Swamps in Georgia. Still others are Dr. Carl B. Eigenmann, the
indefatigable investigator of Brazilian fishes and of the blind fishes
of the caves; Dr. Oliver Peebles Jenkins, the first thorough explorer
of the fishes of Hawaii; Dr. Alembert Winthrop Brayton, explorer
of the streams of the Great Smoky Mountains; Dr. Seth Eugene Meek,
explorer of Mexico; John Otterbein Snyder, explorer of Mexico, Japan,
and Hawaii; Edwin Chapin Starks, explorer of Puget Sound and Panama
and investigator of fish osteology. Still other naturalists of the
coming generation, students of the present writer and of his lifelong
associate, Professor Gilbert, have contributed in various degrees to
the present fabric of American ichthyology. Among them are Mrs. Rosa
Smith Eigenmann, Dr. Joseph Swain, Wilbur Wilson Thoburn (1859-99),
Frank Cramer, Alvin Seale, Albert Jefferson Woolman, Philip H. Kirsch
(1860-1902), Cloudsley Rutter (died 1903), Robert Edward Snodgrass,
James Francis Abbott, Arthur White Greeley, Edmund Heller, Henry Weed
Fowler, Keinosuke Otaki, Michitaro Sindo, and Richard Crittenden
McGregor.
[Illustration: DAVID STARR JORDAN.
HERBERT EDSON COPELAND.
CHARLES HENRY GILBERT.
BARTON WARREN EVERMANN.]
Other facts and conclusions of importance have been contributed by
various persons with whom ichthyology has been an incident rather than
a matter of central importance.
=The Fossil Fishes.=[148]--The study of fossil fishes was begun
systematically during the first decades of the nineteenth century, for
it was then realized that of fossils of back-boned animals, fishes were
the only ones which could be determined from early Palæozoic to recent
horizons, and that from the diversity of their forms they could serve
as reliable indications of the age of rocks. At a later time, when the
evolution of vertebrates began to be studied, fishes were examined
with especial care with a view of determining the ancestral line of
the Amphibians. The earliest work upon fossil fishes is, as one would
naturally expect, of a purely systematic value. Anatomical observations
were scanty and crude, but as the material for study increased, a more
satisfactory knowledge was gained of the structures of the various
major groups of fishes; and finally by a comparison of anatomical
results important light came to be thrown upon more fundamental
problems.
The study of fossil fishes can be divided for convenience into three
periods: (I) That which terminated in the _magnum opus_ of Louis
Agassiz; (II) that of the systematists whose major works appeared
between 1845 and the recent publication of the Catalogue of Fossil
Fishes of the British Museum (from this period date many important
anatomical observations); and (III) that of morphological work, roughly
from 1870 to the present. During this period detailed consideration
has been given to the phylogeny of special structures, to the
probable lines of descent of the groups of fossil fishes, and to the
relationships of terrestrial to aquatic vertebrates.
=First Period.=--=The Work of Louis Agassiz.=--The real beginning
of our knowledge of fossil fishes dates from the publication of the
classic volumes of Agassiz, "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles
(Neuchâtel, 1833-44)." There had previously existed but a fragmentary
and widely scattered literature; the time was ripe for a great work
which should bring together a knowledge of this important vertebrate
fauna and the museums throughout Europe had been steadily growing in
their collections of fossils. Especially ripe, too, since the work
of Cuvier (1769-1832) had been completed and the classic anatomical
papers of J. Müller (1802-56) were appearing. And Agassiz (1807-73) was
eminently the man for this mission. At the age of one and twenty he
had already mapped out the work, and from this time he devoted sixteen
active years to its accomplishment. One gets but a just idea of the
personality of Agassiz when he recalls that the young investigator
while in an almost penniless position contrived to travel over a large
part of Europe, mingle with the best people of his day, devote almost
his entire time to research, employ draughtsmen and lithographers,
support his own printing-house, and in the end publish his "Poissons
Fossiles" in a fashion which would have done credit to the wealthiest
amateur. With tireless energy he collected voluminous notes and
drawings numberless; he corresponded with collectors all over Europe
and prevailed upon them to loan him tons of specimens; in the meanwhile
he collated industriously the early but fragmental literature in such
works as those of de Blainville, Münster, Murchison, Buckland, Egerton,
Redfield, W. C. Williamson, and others. Hitherto less than 300 species
of fossil fishes were known; at the end of Agassiz's work about 900
were described and many of them figured.
It is easy to see that such a work made a ready basis of future
studies. Doubtless, too, much is owing to the personal energy of
Agassiz that such keen interest was focused in the collection and
study of fossil fishes during the middle of the nineteenth century.
The actual value of Agassiz's work can hardly be overestimated; his
figures and descriptions are usually clear and accurate. And it is
remarkable, perhaps, that in view of the very wide field which he
covered that his errors are not more glaring and numerous. Upon the
purely scientific side, however, one must confess that the "Poissons
Fossiles" is of minor importance for the reason that as time has
gone by it has been found to yield no generalizations of fundamental
value. The classification of fishes advocated by Agassiz, based upon
the nature of the scales, has been shown to be convenient rather than
morphological. This indeed Agassiz himself appears to realize in a
letter written to Humboldt, but on the other hand he regards his
creation of the now discarded order of _Ganoids_, which was based upon
integumental characters, as his most important contribution to the
general study of ichthyology. And although there passed through his
hands a series of forms more complete than has perhaps been seen by
any later ichthyologist,[149] a series which demonstrates the steps
in the evolution of the various families and even orders of fishes,
he is nowhere led to such important philosophical conclusions as was,
for example, his contemporary, Johannes Müller. And even to his last
day, in spite of the light which palæontology must have given him, he
denied strenuously the truth of the doctrine of evolution, a result the
more remarkable since he has even given in graphic form the geological
occurrence of the various groups of fishes in a way which suggests
closely a modern phylogenetic table, and since at various times he has
emphasized the dictum that the history of the individual is but the
epitomized history of the race. The latter statement, which has been
commonly attributed to Agassiz, is clearly of much earlier origin; it
was definitely formulated by von Baer and Meckel, the former of whom
even as early as 1834 pronounced himself a distinct evolutionist.
[Illustration: RAMSAY HEATLEY TRAQUAIR.
ARTHUR SMITH WOODWARD.
KARL A. ZITTEL.
CHARLES R. EASTMAN.]
=Second Period.=--=Systematic Study of Fossil Fishes.=--On the ground
planted by Agassiz, many important works sprang up within the next
decades. In England a vigorous school of palæichthyologists was
soon flourishing. Many papers of Egerton date from this time, and
the important work of Owen on the structure of fossil teeth and the
often-quoted papers of Huxley in the "British Fossil Remains." Among
other workers may be mentioned James Powrie, author of a number of
papers upon Scottish Devonian fossils; the enthusiastic Hugh Miller,
stone-mason and geologist; Montague Brown, Thomas Atthey, J. Young,
and W. J. Barkas, students upon Coal Measure fishes; E. Ray Lankester,
some of whose early papers deal with pteraspids; E. T. Newton, author
of important works on chimæroids. The extensive works of J. W. Davis
deal with fishes of many groups and many horizons. Mr. Davis, like
Sir Philip Gray Egerton, was an amateur whose devotion did much to
advance the study of fossil fishes. The dean of British palæichthyology
is at present Dr. R. H. Traquair, of the Edinburgh Museum of Science
and Arts. During four decades he has devoted himself to his studies
with rare energy and success, author of a host of shorter papers and
numerous memoirs and reports. Finally, and belonging to a younger
generation of palæontologists, is to be named Arthur Smith Woodward,
curator of vertebrate palæontology of the British Museum. Dr. Woodward
has already contributed many scores of papers to palæichthyology,
besides publishing a four-volume Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes of the
British Museum, a compendial work whose value can only be appreciated
adequately by specialists.
In the United States the study of fossil fishes was taken up by J. H.
and W. C. Redfield, father and son, prior to the work of Agassiz, and
there has been since that time an active school of American workers.
Agassiz himself, however, is not to be included in this list, since
his interest in extinct fishes became almost entirely unproductive
during his life in America. Foremost among these workers was John
Strong Newberry (1822-92), of Columbia College, whose publications
deal with fishes of many horizons and whose work upon this continent
is not unlike that of Agassiz in Europe. He was the author of many
state reports, separate contributions, and two monographs, one upon the
palæozoic fishes of North America, the other upon the Triassic fishes.
Among the earlier palæontologists were Orestes H. St. John, a pupil
of Agassiz at Harvard, and A. H. Worthen (1813-88), director of the
Geological Survey of Illinois; also W. Gibbes and Joseph Leidy. The
late E. D. Cope (1840-97) devoted a considerable portion of his labors
to the study of extinct fishes. E. W. Claypole, of Buchtel College, is
next to be mentioned as having produced noteworthy contributions to
our knowledge of sharks, palæaspids, and arthrodires, as has also A.
A. Wright, of Oberlin College. Among other workers may be mentioned
O. P. Hay, of the American Museum; C. R. Eastman, of Harvard, author
of important memoirs upon arthrodires and other forms; Alban Stewart,
a student of Dr. S. W. Williston at Kansas University, and Bashford
Dean. Among Canadian palæontologists G. F. Matthew deserves mention for
his work on Cyathaspis, Principal Dawson for interesting references to
Mesozoic fishes, and J. F. Whiteaves for his studies upon the Devonian
fishes of Scaumenac Bay.
Belgian palæontologists have also been active in their study of fishes.
Here we may refer to the work of Louis Dollo, of Brussels, of Max
Lohest, of P. J. van Beneden, of L. G. de Koninck, of T. C. Winckler,
and of R. Storms, the last of whom has done interesting work on
Tertiary fishes.
Foremost among Russian palæichthyologists is to be named C. H. Pander,
long-time Academician in St. Petersburg, whose elaborate studies of
extinct lung-fishes, ostracophores, and crossopterygians published
between 1856 and 1860 will long stand as models of careful work. We
should also refer to the work of H. Asmuss and H. Trautschold, E.
Eichwald and of Victor Rohon, the last named having published many
important papers upon ostracophores during his residence in St.
Petersburg.
German palæichthyologists include Otto Jaekel, of Berlin; O. M. Reis of
the Oberbergamt, in Munich; A. von Koenen, of Göttingen; A. Wagner, E.
Koken, and K. von Zittel. Among Austro-Hungarians are Anton Fritsch,
author of the _Fauna der Gaskohleformations Boemens_; Rudolf Kner, an
active student of living fishes as well, as is also Franz Steindachner.
French palæichthyologists are represented by the veteran H. E. Sauvage,
of Boulogne-sur-Mer, V. Thollière, M. Brongniart, and F. Priem. In
Italy Francesco Bassani, of Naples, is the author of many important
works dealing with Mesozoic and Tertiary forms; also was Baron Achille
di Zigno. Robert Collett, of Bergen, and G. Lindström are worthy
representatives of Scandinavia in kindred work.
=Third Period.=--=Morphological Work on Fossil Fishes.=--Among the
writers who have dealt with the problems of the relationships of the
Ostracophores as well as _Palæospondylus_ and the Arthrodires may be
named Traquair, Huxley, Newberry, Smith Woodward, Rohon, Eastman, and
Dean; most recently William Patten. Upon the phylogeny of the sharks
Traquair, A. Fritsch, Hasse, Cope, Brongniart, Jaekel, Reis, Eastman,
and Dean. On Chimæroid morphology mention may be made of the papers
of A. S. Woodward, Reis, Jaekel, Eastman, C. D. Walcott, and Dean. As
to Dipnoan relationships the paper of Louis Dollo is easily of the
first value; of especial interest, too, is the work of Eastman as
to the early derivation of the Dipnoan dentition. In this regard a
paper of Rohon is noteworthy, as is also that of Richard Semon on the
development of the dentition of recent Neoceratodus, since it contains
a number of references to extinct types. Interest notes on Dipnoan fin
characters have been given by Traquair. In the morphology of Ganoids,
the work of Traquair and A. S. Woodward takes easily the foremost rank.
Other important works are those of Huxley, Cope, A. Fritsch, and Oliver
P. Hay.
=Anatomists.=--Still more difficult of enumeration is the long list of
those who have studied the anatomy of fishes usually in connection with
the comparative anatomy or development of other animals. Pre-eminent
among these are Karl Ernst von Baer, Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
Louis Agassiz, Johannes Müller, Carl Vogt, Carl Gegenbaur, William
Kitchen Parker, Francis M. Balfour, Thomas Henry Huxley, Meckel,
H. Rathke, Richard Owen, Kowalevsky, H. Stannius, Joseph Hyrtl,
Gill, Boulenger, and Bashford Dean. Other names of high authority
are those of Wilhelm His, Kölliker, Bakker, Rosenthal, Gottsche,
Miklucho-Macleay, Weber, Hasse, Retzius, Owsjannikow, H. Müller,
Stieda, Marcusen, J. A. Ryder, E. A. Andrews, T. H. Morgan, G. B.
Grassi, R. Semon, Howard Ayers, R. R. Wright, J. P. McMurrich, C. O.
Whitman, A. C. Eyclesheimer, E. Pallis, Jacob Reighard, and J. B.
Johnston.
Besides all this, there has risen, especially in the United States,
Great Britain, Norway, and Canada and Australia, a vast literature of
commercial fisheries, fish culture, and angling, the chief workers in
which fields we may not here enumerate even by name.
FOOTNOTES:
[148] For these paragraphs on the history of the study of fossil fishes
the writer is indebted to the kind interest of Professor Bashford Dean.
[149] Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward excepted.