Work On Cave Dwelling Fishes
In 1897 King Léopold II of Belgium started to recruit naturalists to help create the Congo museum. Boulenger was named chairman for this commission.
His main discovery in 1921 was a strange fish from Congo. It was eyeless and lacked pigmentation. He recognized it as new and unrelated to any extant epigean (eyed, surface) species of Africa. He wrote a brief paper describing this new species of cave fish, the first ever described from Africa. He called it Caecobarbus geertsi, from caeco = blind, barbus = barb, and geertsii, honoring a mysterious person, M. Geerts, who provided him with the specimen. Today it is known as the Congo or African blind barb. This was published in Nature.
Read more about this topic: George Albert Boulenger
Famous quotes containing the words work, cave, dwelling and/or fishes:
“Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Take a timber
That you shall find lies in the cellar, charred
Among the raspberries, and hew and shape it
For a doorsill or other corner piece
In a new cottage on the ancient spot.
The life is not yet all gone out of it.
And come and make your summer dwelling here....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“If fishes were wishes the ocean would be all of our desire.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)