pilers from the works of other writers. Pliny, Ælian, Athæneus, Isidore, the author of the Libri De Natura Rerum, Albertus Magnus, Johannes Cuba, Marschall, Gesner in great part, Aldrovand in great part. Johnston, Charlton, &c. In regard to method, some have treated of fishes in alphabetical order; some have followed a natural method more or less perfect; others have attended to no method at all, as Ovid, Ælian, Athæneus, Ausonius, Hildegarde, De Pinguia, Paulus, and Bened. Jovius, Figulus, Salvian in his History of the Roman Fishes, and Ruysch: those who have written alphabetically, are Cuba, Marschall, Salvian in his Tabula Piscatoria, Gesner, Schonefeldt, Johnston.

Among the authors who have adopted some kind of rvethod, may first be placed those who have treated of fishes according to the place where they are caught; as Oppian, Rondeletius, Aldrovand, Johnston, and Charlton. Those who have treated of fishes, dividing them into cetaceous, spinose, and cartilaginous, are Aristotle, the author of this method, Wootton, Willughby, Ray; the last two authors have added to this plan the numbering the rays of the fins on the

back.

This was the first step towards the arrangement of Linnæus or Artedi; for the latter in fact was the original author of the system commonly known as that of the illustrious Swede. Willughby's work, entitled De Historia Piscium, was printed at Oxford in 1686, and unfolded many new and accurate views of the anatomy and physiology of fishes. Ray published, in 1707, his Synopsis Methodica Piscium, which may be regarded as an abridged and corrected view of Willughby's larger work, and as indicating a series of genera. This valuable descriptive catalogue continued to be appealed to as a standard, till Artedi and Linnæus effected numerous important changes.

The former of these died before he could mature his plan, and Linnæus, his friend and coadjutor, first published it in 2 vols. 8vo. under the titles of Bibliotheca Ichthyologia, and Philosophia Ichthyologica: republished in 1792 in four vols. But Artedi instituted the orders and genera, and defined the characters on which these divisions are founded. Independently of the cetaceous tribes, which are now classed with the mammalia, his method consisted of four great divisions, viz. 1. The malacopterygian, which denoted those fishes which have soft fins, or fins with bony rays, but without spines: this order included twenty-one genera. 2. The acanthopterygian, or those with spiny fins, containing sixteen genera. 3. The branchiostegous, which corresponds to the amphibia nantes of Linnæus, which want the operculum, or branchiostegous membrane and 4. The chondropterygian, which answers to that part of the amphibia nantes which have not true bones, but only cartilages, and the rays of whose fins scarcely differ from a membrane. In the first edition of the System of Nature Linnæus wholly adopted this method, but more matured reflection led him to make considerable alterations.

It may be worth mentioning, in conclusion of this sketch, that Klein and Gronovius have also

been projectors of new ichthyological systems, which have rivalled the Linnaan. Klein distributed fishes into three sections, according as they had lungs, and visible or invisible gills; but his subdivisions were very numerous and complex, and his scheme never extensively adopted. That of Gronovius was founded on the presence or absence, and the number or the nature of the fins: his first class including all the cetaceous animals, and the second all the fishes properly so called. The chondropterygian, and the osseous or bony, form two other great divisions, and the osseous are sub-divided into bronchios tegous and branchial. These last are grouped according to the Linnæan rules, but, in the formation of the genera, the number of the dorsal fins is admitted as a character. Scopoli also struck out an original path, and assumed the position of the anus as the basis of his three primary divisions; his secondary characters sometimes coincided with those of Gronovius, and sometimes with those of Linnæus; while his third series of characters was drawn from the form of the body, or that of the teeth. Gouan, of Montpelier, is another ichthyologist who has attempted to unite and improve the systems of Artedi and Linnæus. The authors to whom we have thus referred, excepting Belon, Rondelet, and Gronovius, published their works without any regular series of plates; but there are others who have given very valuable figures of fishes, as Seba, in his collection of the subjects of natural history; Catesby, in his Natural History of Carolina; Broussonet, in his Ichthyologia; and Bloch, in his Natural History of Fishes, published at Berlin, in German, and afterwards reprinted in 1785, in French, as a part of the Histoire Naturelle de Buffon. The original work of Bloch includes about 600 species of fishes, beautifully colored. La Cépéde, the friend and continuator of Buffon, also executed an elaborate and extensive work on the natural history of fishes. He divides them into two secondary classes, viz. the cartilaginous and the osseous; each consisting of four divisions, taken from the combinations of the presence or absence of the operculum, and of the branchial membrane: thus, according to this system, the first division of the cartliaginous includes those fishes which have neither operculum nor branchial membranes; the second, which have no operculum, but a membrane; the third, which have an operculum, but no membrane; and, the fourth, those that have both. The same characters, stated in an inverse order, determine the divisions of the osseous species. Each of these divisions is distributed into the Linnæan orders, and these again are divided into the Linnæan genera.

In the Linnaan system the fins of fishes are the foundation of the first four orders, and are named from their situation on the animal, viz. the dorsal or back-fins; the pectoral or breastfins; the ventral or belly-fins; the anal or ventfin; and the caudal or tail-fin. The ventral-fins are considered by our great naturalist as analogous to feet in quadrupeds. The other two orders are formed from the nature of the gills: thus,