Excerpt from The British Parasitic Copepoda, Vol. 1: Copepoda Parasitic on Fishes Dr. Baird's work on 'The Natural History of the British Entomostraca, ' published by the Ray Society in 1850, marked an important stage in British Natural History research, and forms the basis of the present volume. That work contains a complete account of the Copepoda found living as parasites on British fishes, so far as then known. Much has been done since then to extend our knowledge of these organisms, and many species have been added to the number recorded by Dr. Baird. His work naturally tended to produce such results, for it placed before British students, in a concise manner, a large amount of interesting information concerning these parasitic forms, and, by showing the successful results which had already been accomplished in other countries among such curious animals, led to an increased interest in their study. 'A Monograph of the Free and Semi-Parasitic Copepoda, ' by Dr. G. S. Brady, was published by the Ray Society in 1878 - 1880. That work, which consists of three volumes, marked a second important stage in the study of these minute crustaceans, and was an evidence of the increasing attention their study was receiving. But though several groups of the non-freeliving species were described in that Monograph, those found parasitic on fishes were expressly omitted. The author in his Introduction states: "The truly parasitic forms - fish-lice, etc. - are excluded as not coming within the scope of my work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com 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.