PREFACE TO VOLUME III

THE present volume concludes the Bibliography of Fishes, and in it is the test of the practical value of our task, which is its highly developed Index. For the reader who seeks information relating to fishes should be able promptly and easily to put his finger on whatever has been written on his theme, whether it deals with fishes living or fossil, their distribution, physiology, anatomy, development, teratology, their life-habits, minute structure, commercial importance, artistic interest, food-value, or their significance in biological economy. In fact it is our hope that such a Bibliography will be useful not to ichthyologists only but to seekers of knowledge everywhere.

Thus the chemist who studies egg-yolk, the sanitary engineer who aims to destroy disease-bearing insects, the physiologist who seeks data on the regeneration of nerves, the student of the cancer problem, the anthropologist who describes the life-habits of primitive peoples, the bacteriologist whose work touches diseases in fishes, the medical practitioner who would know the earlier hosts of certain parasites or about oils digestible to his patients even the amateur of heraldry, or the theologian each and all of these will here find materials which concern his work.

If the reader will refer to the table of contents mapped out for the Bibliography in Volumes I and II he will note that hitherto were published only (I) Authors' Lists of Titles and (II) Anonymous Publications. There remained (III) Pre-Linnæan Works, (IV) General Bibliographies which included references to Fishes, (V) Voyages and Expeditions, (VI) List of Periodicals relating to Fish and Fish Culture, (VII) Subject Index of Authors' Titles and Final Index, and (VIII) Addenda and Errata of Volumes I and II.

Those headings, then, (IV) to (VIII), will be found in the present volume. The original plan has been changed only in detail. Thus headings (VII) and (VIII) have been transposed for convenient reference, and the Addenda (placed at the beginning of Vol. III) have been enlarged by introducing themes (e. g. fisheries or fishing methods) which earlier for specific reasons had been largely omitted. In fact, it was found that the work was undergoing an evolution of its own,

on the one hand broadening its scope and on the other including even more minute details. In the former regard the editors were frequently puzzled to decide where to lay down an ultimate boundary, e. g. to determine whether certain groups of titles should be subdivided, rearranged or even rejected.

EXPLANATION OF MATERIALS IN THE PRESENT VOLUME

Of sections (III) to (VI) little need here be said. The Pre-Linnæan Literature (III) (from the earliest writings up to 1758) is cited in detail and only after laborious research. In gathering this material the works themselves have in many cases been scrutinized even to their revisions and versions, those in English checked largely after the studies of Lowndes. The earliest papers on Angling and Pisciculture follow in the main the work of Westwood and Satchell. And for the reader's convenience extremely rare works are noted as occurring in definite libraries.

Regarding Errata and Corrigenda (VII), a more detailed examination of bibliographies cited in special memoirs has yielded additional titles and has enabled us to correct defective citations. On the other hand, as is often the case in bibliography, we have found that lists of works cited in special memoirs are usually, if not always, seriously defective; even in so special a study as the list of papers of Dr. Gill, prepared by the Smithsonian, thirty-two titles were missed which we had earlier collected, while, truth to tell, it contained about twenty titles which were not on our cards. Or in the instance of so scholarly and detailed a work as Gemmill's "Teratology of Fishes" we have been able by consulting a greater range of authors to increase its number of references by no less than one-fourth. Another example is in Ackermann's (K. 1898.1) studies of hybrids among fishes where only nineteen hybrids are recorded, while the present work enumerates over fifty (including, of course, later citations). In general it will be found that our titles end with the year 1914 - which marks a convenient international stopping point as a result of the Great War. It is true that a number of later papers are cited in our pages, but these only for special reasons as in rounding out the bibliographies of writers who since have died (e. g. Eastman, Steindachner), or in completing outstanding works (e. g. Jordan's "Genera" or Boulenger's "Fishes of Africa"). In certain instances where especially important papers had appeared they have been cited in our Subject Index.

The Alphabetical Index of Subjects (VIII) requires a long explanatory note. Indeed it is clear that the diverse materials sifted from a vast number of references, nearly fifty thousand, could not, in the nature

of things, be reduced readily to a well ordered index. Nor was it an easy task to classify the themes of each paper for purpose of reference. Hence it may be well here to explain the steps or stages which the editors followed in their task. The first stage consisted in placing the dissected pages of Volumes I and II and other Authors' Titles on the tables of the members of the editorial staff, dividing the materials so far as possible in accordance with the special studies of the various workers, who could now note at the side of each title as printed the captions under which it should be indexed - which meant, in practice, that the same paper would usually be cited under numerous headings. The second stage in indexing was to prepare a separate card for each heading as noted above, not citing, however, the full title of the paper, but giving only the author's name and the date and order of his publication, by means of which the reader could at once locate the exact title in Volumes I or II. The third stage brought together cards of similar captions and filed them in large trays in an elaborately subdivided card catalogue of subjects. The fourth stage consisted in the editing of all material thus classified. In thousands of instances where there was doubt as to actual contents the original papers were examined, titles revised and errors corrected. In very many cases authors were found to have given inadequate descriptions of their work and these were corrected. Thus, who would have known from its titlepage that the work of Dabry de Thiersant (1872.1) had anything to do with the fish fauna of China, or from the title of Mark's paper (1890.1) on the ganoid Lepidosteus that it was to become the standard. reference for the egg-membranes of Teleosts? Unfortunately, it was not practicable to examine every paper, and for this reason there will be found numerous errors of omission in our work. For the papers of the United States Fisheries Commission we had not then at hand the admirable index prepared by Miss MacDonald, which would have saved us much time in "checking up" our cards; on the other hand, careful use was made of earlier bibliographies of which in all over fifty thousand pages were taken into account.

The fifth stage in the growth of the Index was the introduction of an "honor system": the reader should be told what papers were the best in his field, and the first which he should consult. To this end the asterisk, familiar to all in Bædecker's guide-book, was brought into play, although never carried to the degree of introducing double "stars" at the head of each name and title. Such a mark, then, denotes an excellent paper, generally accessible, and with references up to date. Inaugural dissertations do not come into account here, for they are often printed privately and are rare. In case the paper is

a classical one, like Agassiz's "Poissons Fossiles," or Johannes Müller's "Myxinoiden," or is the most important one upon a subject, it is printed in black face type. It is obvious, of course, that our estimate of the value of a particular paper may not be just, but the general reader will probably be willing to take chances, and in case he finds us in error we must console ourselves with Newton's complacent dictum that "it is impossible to print a book without faults."

The sixth stage in preparing the Index was decided upon only after numerous conferences: should the arrangement form a dry-as-dust conventional index or should it be classified, with references so grouped as to give the reader at one time and in one place materials for selection. Of many headings, too, summaries and introductions were recommended. This general procedure, it was agreed, would give an encyclopedic value to our work, but it would also entail vast labor upon our staff. It meant that the references of the bibliography in their vast number be again sifted over, and many of them boiled down for citation. Such a task the editors next attacked and they have now brought it to a successful conclusion-cheered not a little by the favorable comments of critical bibliographers such a national expert, for example, as Dr. Lydenberg of the New York Public Library noting that a work on such lines "would have no parallel in the history of science," which is praise indeed! Certainly of no other branch of the Animal Kingdom is there known to us as complete a compendium of the literature or one so minutely digested for the reader.

It became clear also that the sixth stage in the work, which assured to it an Annotated Index, would have to be followed by a seventh, which was to compile in the end an index of our index (VIII). This, it was agreed, would prove more or less of a secretarial undertaking. It meant, nevertheless, that the editors should indicate in the Annotated Subject Index all words or themes which should be placed in alphabetical order in the Final Index. Thus in the Subject Index, such a theme as "Egg" should be considered in general and in detail, in rebus membranes, yolk, nucleus, etc., and under each caption would naturally appear many technicalia - but arranged in their natural, not in their alphabetical order, e. g. permeability, micropyle, etc. But even thus arranged these names would not be so scattered that the reader would have trouble to find them; for he could pick them up at definite pages in an alphabetical list at the end of the volume.

There were certain guiding principles which were laid down during the progress of the work:

(a) Regarding species, genera and many families of living and fossil fishes we could not attempt to cite purely systematic references in

greatest detail. There have been described probably twenty thousand kinds of fishes and to each of these are many references, in certain cases hundreds and even thousands. To attempt, therefore, to include them in the present work was hardly practicable; for one thing, it would entail years of added labor and extra volumes. Moreover, such a labor seemed to the editors the less necessary since it is the particular branch of the subject which has already been given the greatest attention. Hence the student of the systematique is here referred only to general works. In a word, the present volume leads the investigator through the literature of the fishes only so far as families and genera: it records species rarely.

Only in instances of rare and unusual fishes have we cited the literature in extenso, e. g. deep-sea fishes of especial interest in morphology or physiology, or fishes of restricted localities. For new species the reader must still consult his Zoological Record. For genera he has now the splendid work of Jordan (1917.1). None the less, he will here find references to extensive papers which cite new species in considerable number, together with many useful taxonomic revisions and synopses. His further systematic details he must continue to "run down" in Jordan and Evermann's "Fishes of North and Middle America," Boulenger's "Fishes of Africa," Day's "Fishes of India," etc., Gunther's "Catalogue [1859-70] of the British Museum," for living fishes, and Smith Woodward's for fossil [1889-1901], the latter forming the "Bible" of all students of this theme. In the last regard it will be found that the detailed indexing of fossil teeth has been largely omitted, though fossil spines, ichthyodorulites, have been included. In a word, the compilers have tried, so far as possible, not to reprint needlessly the classical work of systematists, or to re-index such publications as the Zoological Record or the cards of the Concilium Bibliographicum.

(b) In matters of Synonymy we have not attempted to decide. questions of priority in nomenclature: we have accepted a name as an author has given it, save in case its synonymy was obvious. In general we have been content to follow technical names which are well known.

In the case of Group-names, e. g. Ganoidei, we have sometimes for convenience followed older and popularly accepted terms and for the same reason we have adopted the groups for classification given in Cambridge Natural History (1904). These at least are clear and accessible; and although we do not personally subscribe to them toto calo, we feel that our present function is rather to place in the reader's hand sources of information than to decide for him which kind of classification he should ultimately adopt.