American Fishes Microform PDF Download

Excerpt from American Fishes: A Popular Treatise Upon the Game and Food Fishes of North America, With Especial Reference to Habits and Methods of Capture "Come, let us discourse about fish," said Athenæus, in his "Deipnosophia," and so said Mr. A. R. Hart, coming into my study last January. "Write us a book about fish and fishing in America," he urged, and since, as it happens, I know more about fish and fishing in America than I do about anything else, I consented. This volume has been prepared for the use at* the angler, the lover of nature, and the general reader. It is not intended for naturalists, and the technicalities of zoological description have therefore been avoided ; for the concise and precise phraseology of science, admirable though it be tor the use of those who have been trained to employ it, is to others not only misleading, but it may be, repulsive. I have aimed to include in my discussion every North American fish which is likely to be of interest to the general reader, either because of its gameness or its economic uses. All others are excluded, because, from the standpoint of scientific interest, every one of the seventeen hundred and fifty species indigenous to our continent has equal claim to consideration, and to discuss, or even casually mention them all, within the limits of a book of ordinary size, would be next to impossible. President Jordan's recent pamphlet, entitled "A Catalogue of the Fishes Known to Inhabit the Waters North of the Tropic of Cancer, with notes on the Species Discovered in 1883 and 1884," contains, with its indexes. 184 pages, and this is merely a list. His "Synopsis of the Fishes of North America," which simply enumerates and gives brief diagnoses of the fourteen hundred or more species known in 1882, contains 1018 pages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.