''Histoire naturelle des poissons'' is a 22-volume treatment of

ichthyology Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Octob ...

published in 1828–1849 by the French

savant Savant syndrome () is a rare condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average. The skills that savants excel at are generally related to memory. This may include rapid calcu ...

Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier ...

(1769–1832) and his student and successor

Achille Valenciennes Achille Valenciennes (9 August 1794 – 13 April 1865) was a French zoologist. Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier. His study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasitology. ...

(1794–1865). It was a systematic compendium of the fishes of the world known at that time, and treated altogether 4 514 species of fishes, of which 2 311 were new to science. It is still one of the most ambitious undertakings in ichthyology ever. Most of the work appeared after the death of Cuvier. Later,

Auguste Duméril Auguste Henri André Duméril (30 November 1812 – 12 November 1870) was a French zoologist. His father, André Marie Constant Duméril (1774-1860), was also a zoologist. In 1869 he was elected as a member of the Académie des sciences. Duméril ...

still supplemented the work by two volumes in 1865 and 1870, which dealt mostly with groups that Cuvier had omitted, such as

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimo ...

s. Cuvier's treatment was not only based on the resources and samples of the

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loc ...

, where he was a director, but also on an extensive network of correspondents and explorers that were travelling around the world and collecting and sending samples and observations. The species descriptions are often accurate and well prepared, as are the illustrations, but there are exceptions for instance when based on poorly preserved material or on just one sex. At all events, the work remained as a basic reference for several generations of ichthyologists.

External links

''Histoire naturelle des poissons'' t.1 - t.22
online version at

Biodiversity Heritage Library The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as worldwide consortiumof natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working toge ...

''Histoire naturelle des poissons''. Vol. 6
in Google Books *A. Dumeril (1865
''Histoire naturelle des poissons, ou, Ichthyologie générale'', vol. 2
supplementary volume online at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Histoire Naturelle Des Poissons Ichthyological literature 1828 non-fiction books