PREFATORY The scientific literature relative to the fishes of the western coast of North America is of unusually recent, as well as rapid, growth. Noth- ing exact was known till the present century had far advanced, for the accounts of the earlier writers, such as Yenegas, intead of enlightening the reader, convey absolutely false ideas respecting the character of the ichthyic fauna. Exclusive of incidental notices, the beginnings of an ichthyography of the northwest coast were first published in 1831 but printed in 1811 in the Zoographia Kosso-Asiatica of Pallas a few species from British Columbia were described by Eichardson in 1836, while the fishes of Californiaremained absolutelyunknown till 1 839, when a glimpse, but an entirely inadequate one, was furnished by Lay and Bennett in their notes and account of species collected during the voyage of the English vessel Blossom. A long silence then supervened, and, with the exceptions thus signalized, and the addition by Storer of a single species of Syngnathus in 1846, west-coast ichthyography commenced in 1854 with the announcement, by Professor Agassiz, of the discovery of the remarkable family of Embiotocoids. This was speedily followed by numerous communications, by Dr. Gibbons, Dr. Girard, and Dr. Ayres, on new species of fishes, mostly from the Cali- fornian waters, but partly from the Oregonian ones. As early as 1858, nearly 200 species had been made known, and the descriptions of most were collected in a general report by Dr. Girard. The main features of the ichthyology of the Pacific slope were then already known but more recent laborers have not only extended largely our knowledge of species, but added anumber of entirely new forms, and thrown much light on the relations of the fish-fauna of that region to others. The following bibliography is a nearly complete enumeration, in chronological order, of the memoirs and articles of all kinds that have been published on the fishes of the region in question. The chrono- logical order has been determined by the date of reading of the articles communicated to learned societies. lu cases of question of priority, the right depends, of course, on the period of publication but this is sometimes with great difficulty ascertainable, and motives of con- venience have dictated the sequence adopted. Perhaps some will be disposed to believe that the compiler has sinned in redundancy rather than deficiency in this bibliography. The evils of the former are, however, easily remedied, while those of the latter must leave the consulter in more or less doubt. Many popular works have been catalogued where original information of even slight value was contained, and when such works were among the earliest published on the regions.in question...