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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/418

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402
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preparation, tHe coast, lakes, etc., of the country were mapped off into twenty-four districts, each of which was assigned to a field assistant. "This work," says Mr. Gill, "was by far the most complete survey of the economical fishes of the country that had ever appeared, and has since been the most prized. It led to another." This other was American Fishes; a Popular Treatise upon the Game and Food Fishes of North America, with Especial Reference to Habits and Modes of Capture. This volume was prepared, the author said in his prologue, for "the use of the angler, the lover of Nature, and the general reader." It was not intended for naturalists, and the technicalities of zoölogical description were therefore avoided. Prof. Goode's plan, in selecting from the seventeen hundred and fifty species of fish indigenous to our waters those to be described in the book, was to include every North American fish which was likely to be of interest to the general reader, either on account of its genuineness or its economical uses. The physical features of each fish were described, its range and season were marked, its habits in regard to feeding, migration, and breeding were delineated, and something was told about the method of capturing it and its value as food; but it contained "no discussions of rods, reels, lines, hooks, and flies, and no instructions concerning camping out, excursions, routes, guides, and hotels." Mingled with these facts were information about the different names of fishes in different places, exciting fishing adventures, and excursions into the literature of the ubject.

In the meantime Dr. Goode had (1879-1881) prepared the text for a work on the game fishes of the United States, intended to accompany twenty large folio colored plates by S. A. Kilbourne. The collections made by the Fish Commission and the steamers Blake, Albatross, and Fish Hawk were carefully studied by Dr. Goode and Dr. Bean, and the fruits of their labor were put forth in a book in two volumes, with one hundred and twenty-three plates, on Oceanic Ichthyology, a Treatise on the Pelagic and Deep-sea Fishes of the World, which came from the press only about two weeks before Dr. Goode's death. In 1880 Dr. Goode published the story of The First Decade of the United States Fish Commission: its Plan of Work and Accomplished Results, Scientific and Economical. The same subject was presented in a paper read before the American Association at its Boston meeting, 1880, the aim of which was declared to be to show, in a general way, what the commission had done, was doing, and expected to do—"its purposes, methods, and results." In 1881 he published Epochs in the History of Fish Culture, and in 1882 an encyclopædic article on The Fisheries of the World. He was author of the article on Pisciculture in the Encyclopædia Britannica, an admirable