In recent years the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission has outgrown its older brother, the Report of the Commissioner, and in some respects supplanted it. The last volume of the Report, part xvii, bears the date of publication 1893, but it was only received by us in the present month of June, 1894, and it refers to operations carried out in the two years 1889–91,—in other words, from three to five years ago. The volume consists of three general reports and six appendices. The former are the Report of the Commissioner, that of Mr. Richard Rathbun on the Inquiry respecting Food-fishes and the Fishing-grounds, and that of Mr. Hugh M. Smith on the Inquiry regarding the Methods and Statistics of the Fisheries. The Appendices comprise three special reports, a Review of Sparoid Fishes, by David Starr Jordan and Bert Fesler, an article on Fish Entozoa, and a translation of Haeckel‘s well-known pamphlet, Plankton-Studien.