Excerpt from An Annotated List of Puget Sound Fishes<br><br>So many inquiries have been made in recent years in regard to our native fishes, it was deemed advisable to publish a brief popular survey of our fish fauna for the benefit of those interested in the marine life of. This region.<br><br>The most recent list of the species of fish found in Puget Sound was published by Professor E. C. Starks of Stanford University in 1911. He enumerates 168 forms of fish' life known to exist in our waters or recorded from contiguous Canadian territory with the presumption that they occur in Puget Sound. Several species have come to light since his paper was published and there is little doubt the number of kinds of fish in this region will be increased to at least 200 in the near future.<br><br>Many of the species now on record are extremely rare, although this may simply mean we do not know where or how to search for them. In some cases but a single specimen has ever been seen and a number are recorded from a knowledge of less than half a dozen examples. Some are strays from southern waters or have straggled down from Alaska, while others have been swept into Puget Sound by some unusual circumstance from the open ocean where they normally reside.<br><br>The richness of the Puget Sound fauna is doubtless due to the fact that we have here a meeting place for two great centers of marine evolution. Many species of animals originally developed in Alaska have gradually extended their range till they reached the Sound, while from the other great center off the shores of California a similar migration has occurred in times past. Thus Puget Sound is the southern limit of the distribution of many northern forms, while it is likewise the northern limit of a number of southern species.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>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.