authors from personal examination—a comparatively small proportion, but descriptions and figures still formed in great measure the substitute for our modern collections and museums. With the increasing accumulation of forms, the want of a fixed nomenclature had become more and more felt.
Peter Artedi (1705–1734) would have been a great ichthyologist if Ray or Willughby had not preceded him. But he was fully conscious of the fact that both had prepared the way for him, and therefore he did not fail to reap every possible advantage from their labours. His work, edited by Artedi. Linnaeus, is divided as follows:—
(1) In the Bibliotheca ichthyologica Artedi gives a very complete list of all preceding authors who had written on fishes, with a critical analysis of their works. (2) The Philosophia ichthyologica is devoted to a description of the external and internal parts of fishes; Artedi fixes a precise terminology for all the various modifications of the organs, distinguishing between those characters which determine a genus and such as indicate a species or merely a variety; in fact he establishes the method and principles which subsequently have guided every systematic ichthyologist. (3) The Genera piscium contains well-defined diagnoses of forty-five genera, for which he has fixed an unchangeable nomenclature. (4) In the Species piscium descriptions of seventy-two species, examined by himself, are given—descriptions which even now are models of exactitude and method. (5) Finally, in the Synonymia piscium references to all previous authors are arranged for every species, very much in the manner which is adopted in the systematic works of the present day.
Artedi has been justly called the father of ichthyology. So admirable was his treatment of the subject, that even Linnaeus could only modify and add to it. Indeed, so far as ichthyology is concerned, Linnaeus has scarcely done anything beyond applying binominal terms to the species Linnaeus. properly described and classified by Artedi. His classification of the genera appears in the 12th edition of the Systema thus:—
A. Amphibia nantia.—Spiraculis compositis.—Petromyzon, Raía, Squalus, Chimaera. Spiraculis solitariis.—Lophius, Acipenser, Cyclopterus, Balistes, Ostracion, Tetrodon, Diodon, Centriscus, Syngnathus, Pegasus.
B. Pisces apodes.—Muraena, Gymnotus, Trichiurus, Anarrhichas, Ammodytes, Ophidium, Stromateus, Xiphias.
C. Pisces jugulares.—Callionymus, Uranoscopus, Trachinus, Gadus, Blennius.
D. Pisces thoracici.—Cepola, Echeneis, Coryphaena, Gobius, Cottus, Scorpaena, Zeus, Pleuronectes, Chaetodon, Sparus, Labrus, Sciaena, Perca, Gasterosteus, Scomber, Mullus, Trigla.
E. Pisces abdominales.—Cobitis, Amia, Silurus, Teuthis, Loricaria, Salmo, Fistularia, Esox, Elops, Argentina, Atherina, Mugil, Mormyrus, Exocoetus, Polynemus, Clupea, Cyprinus.
Two contemporaries of Linnaeus, L. T. Gronow and J. T. Klein, attempted a systematic arrangement of fishes.
The works of Artedi and Linnaeus led to an activity of research, especially in Scandinavia, Holland, Germany and England, such as has never been equalled in the history of biological science. Whilst some of the pupils and followers of Linnaeus devoted themselves to the examination and study of the fauna of their native countries, others proceeded on voyages of discovery to foreign and distant lands. Of these latter the following may be especially mentioned: O. Fabricius worked out the fauna of Greenland; Peter Kalm collected in North America, F. Hasselquist in Egypt and Palestine, M. T. Brünnich in the Mediterranean, Osbeck in Java and China, K. P. Thunberg in Japan; Forskål examined and described the fishes of the Red Sea; G. W. Steller, P. S. Pallas, S. G. Gmelin, and A. J. Güldenstädt traversed nearly the whole of the Russian empire in Europe and Asia. Others attached themselves as naturalists to celebrated navigators, such as the two Forsters (father and son) and Solander, who accompanied Cook; P. Commerson, who travelled with Bougainville; and Pierre Sonnerat. Of those who studied the fishes of their native countries, the most celebrated were Pennant (Great Britain), O. F. Müller (Denmark), Duhamel du Monceau (France), C. von Meidinger (Austria), J. Cornide (Spain), and A. Parra (Cuba).
The mass of materials brought together was so great that, not long after the death of Linnaeus, the necessity made itself felt for collecting them in a compendious form. Several compilers undertook this task; they embodied the recent discoveries in new editions of the classical works of Artedi and Linnaeus, but, they only succeeded in burying those noble monuments under a chaotic mass of rubbish. For ichthyology it was fortunate that two men at least, Bloch and Lacepède, made it a subject of prolonged original research.
Mark Eliezer Bloch (1723–1799), a physician of Berlin, had reached the age of fifty-six when he began to write on ichthyological subjects. His work consists of two divisions:— (1) Öconomische Naturgeschichte der Fische Deutschlands (Berl., 1782–1784); (2) Naturgeschichte der ausländischen Bloch. Fische (Berl., 1785–1795). The first division, which is devoted to a description of the fishes of Germany, is entirely original. His descriptions as well as figures were made from nature, and are, with few exceptions, still serviceable; indeed many continue to be the best existing in literature. Bloch was less fortunate, and is much less trustworthy, in his natural history of foreign fishes. For many of the species he had to trust to more or less incorrect drawings and descriptions by travellers; frequently, also, he was deceived as to the origin of specimens which he purchased. Hence his accounts contain numerous errors, which it would have been difficult to correct had not nearly the whole of the materials on which his work is based been preserved in the collections at Berlin.
After the completion of his great work Bloch prepared a general system of fishes, in which he arranged not only those previously described, but also those with which he had afterwards become acquainted. The work was ably edited and published after Bloch’s death by a philologist, J. G. Schneider, under the title M. E. Blochii Systema ichthyologiae iconibus cx. illustratum (Berl., 1801). The number of species enumerated amounts to 1519. The system is based upon the number of the fins, the various orders being termed Hendecapterygii, Decapterygii, &c. An artificial method like this led to the most unnatural combinations and distinctions.
Bloch’s Naturgeschichte remained for many years the standard work. But as regards originality of thought Bloch was far surpassed by his contemporary, B. G. E. de Lacepède, born at Agen, in France, in 1756, who became professor at the museum of natural history in Paris, where he died in 1825.
Lacepède had to contend with great difficulties in the preparations of his Histoire des poissons (Paris, 1798–1803, 5 vols.), which was written during the most disturbed period of the French Revolution. A great part of it was composed whilst the author was separated from collections and Lacepède. books, and had to rely on his notes and manuscripts only. Even the works of Bloch and other contemporaneous authors remained unknown or inaccessible to him for a long time. His work, therefore, abounds in the kind of errors into which a compiler is liable to fall. Thus the influence of Lacepède on the progress of ichthyology was vastly less than that of his fellow-labourer; and the labour laid on his successors in correcting numerous errors probably outweighed the assistance which they derived from his work.
The work of the principal students of ichthyology in the period between Ray and Lacepède was chiefly systematizing and describing; but the internal organization of fishes also received attention from more than one great anatomist. Albrecht von Haller, Peter Camper and John Hunter examined the nervous system and the organs of sense; and Alexander Monro, secundus, published a classical work, The Structure and Physiology of Fishes Explained and Compared with those of Man and other Animals (Edin., 1785). The electric organs of fishes (Torpedo and Gymnotus) were examined by Réaumur, J. N. S. Allamand, E. Bancroft, John Walsh, and still more exactly by J. Hunter. The mystery of the propagation of the eel called forth a large number of essays, and even the artificial propagation of Salmonidae was known and practised by J. G. Gleditsch (1764).
Bloch and Lacepède’s works were almost immediately succeeded by the labours of Cuvier, but his early publications were tentative, preliminary and fragmentary, so that some little time elapsed before the spirit infused into ichthyology by this great anatomist could exercise its influence on all the workers in this field.
