It was the author's dream in 1952 to collect specimens and photographs of every cichlid that existed in nature. Now, in 1993, he realizes that he may not be able to complete the project, so he decides to publish what he had. For those missing species, he had to rely upon John Quinn to make drawings but still was able to illustrate every scientifically described cichlid species in the world. This amounted to 2271 colored illustrations and about 1,500 species and sub-species.