Discovery of Australia's Fishes A History of Australian Ichthyology to 1930

About this book

This book traces the discovery of Australia’s fishes from the earliest days of taxonomy to the first part of the 20th century. It provides a unique insight into the diverse pathways by which Australia’s fish were discovered and outlines the history of early maritime explorations in Australia that collected natural history specimens. The book covers the life and work of each of the most important discoverers, and assesses their accomplishments and the limitations of their work. Discovery of Australia’s Fishes is distinctive in that a biographic approach is integrated with chronological descriptions of the discovery of the Australian fish fauna. Many of northern Australia’s fishes are found in parts of the Indian and western Pacific oceans. The book covers the work of collectors who travelled outside Australia, together with that of the British and European zoologists who received and described their collections. The account ceases at 1930, the year the first modern checklist of Australian fishes was published.

Contents

Preface
Abbreviations of sources
Acknowledgements

Part One (to 1800)
Early ichthyology to the time of Ray and Willughby
Artedi, Linnaeus and the Systema Naturae
Linnaeus’ students, their voyages of discovery, and their French contemporaries
Seba, Dutch naturalists and the stadholder’s cabinet
Bloch and Schneider, Pallas, Lacépède, Broussonet
The British Museum before 1800 (Shaw)
Voyages to Australia before 1800
Collections in Australia before 1800

Part Two (1800 to 1870)
Flinders (Bauer, Brown) and Baudin (Péron and Lesueur)
French voyages (1817 to 1840)
Darwin (Jenyns)
Cuvier and Valenciennes, and their contributors
Gray at the British Museum, and the Bennetts
Richardson
Ichthyology and empire
Continental ichthyology
Bleeker
Günther
Fish collection and ichthyology in Australia (1800 to 1870)

Part Three (1870 to 1930)
Castelnau
Interregnum
Overseas contributions
Ogilby
Waite
McCulloch
Contemporaries of Ogilby, Waite and McCulloch
A glance forward from 1930

Appendix: Classification of fish species
Glossary
References
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Brian Saunders is a retired Adelaide eye surgeon with a lifelong interest in marine biology and a long-standing interest in the history of ichthyology. In 2009 he published Shores and Shallows of Coffin Bay.