At the age of 47, the German surgeon Marcus Elieser Bloch began to study the fishes of Germany, evidently as a hobby. "Chance gave me an occasion" Bloch remembered, "to apply myself to the study of fishes. Someone sent me a great Maräne, a species of salmon, from Lake Madui. I opened my Linnaeus to read what he said of it. But I saw, to my great astonishment that he had not known of this Maräne "This omission excited my curiosity..." Thus began a productive life of ichthyology. Bloch's 1782 volume, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische, is considered to be one of the most important in ichthyological literature, even two centuries after its publication. The beautiful hand-colored illustrations below are from this publication.