Originally published as Bulletin of the US Bureau of Fisheries, Volume XLIII, 1927, Part I, this is a classic of the fisheries literature that has been out-of-print and unavailable too long. For each species included in the book, the authors attempted to provide common names, descriptions (in language as non-technical as possible), diagnostic characteristics, variations, food and feeding habits, spawning, embryology and larval development, growth rates, relative abundance, commercial importance, habitat and specimens in the Smithsonian collection.