Excerpt from A History of the Fishes of Massachusetts As one of the Commissioners on the Zoology of Massachusetts, in the year 1839, I prepared a Report on the Ichthyology of the State. From the brief time Occupied in its preparation, it was necessarily imperfect, and, not being accompanied by figures, was comparatively useless, except to scientific men. Since the appearance of that communication, much information has been obtained respecting several of the most common and valuable fishes, and quite a number of new species have been ascertained to exist in our waters. Having carefully re-described all the species, I trust the following paper will present an accurate history of the fishes of our State. Considering this as the completion of my former Report, I have kept in View the primary object of the commission, - to asoer tain the value of our Fauna in an economical point of View, rather than to prepare labored scientific descriptions. 1' 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.