A Guide to the Study of Fishes, Volume 1 (of 2)

by David Starr Jordan

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.

David Starr Jordan.

Herbert Edson Copeland.

Charles Henry Gilbert.

Barton Warren Evermann.