This is what I wrote in the Winter 96/97 American Currents:
One of the earliest continent-wide surveys is also the most staggering --
The Fishes of North and Middle America by David Starr Jordan and Barton
Warren Evermann (1896-1900, Bulletin of the United States National Museum
No. 47, 4 vols., ccv + 3,331 p. + 192 black-and-white plates; reprinted by
T.F.H. Publications in 1963, hardcover). The scope of this work is truly
epic: descriptions of 3,263 freshwater, estaurine and coastal marine fishes;
over 3,500 pages of densely-packed pre-computer 8-point type; and 958
marvelously detailed engravings. To read it is to enter a golden age of
purely descriptive biology, when 19th-century naturalists ventured forth,
Lewis-and-Clark-like, to collect, pickle, and describe every living organism
they saw. Who cares if they were naming the same fish twice, thrice, four
times over? It was Manifest Destiny, biology style. The classification and
nomenclature is now woefully out-of-date, but the descriptive material is
timeless. A veritable Gray's Anatomy of American ichthyology.
Chris Scharpf
Baltimore
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