PEEF ACE. 



The work I now present to tlie notice of the reader is, I believe, the only attempt which 

 has yet been made to publish a fairly complete account of the Ichthyology of our Indian 

 Empire. I propose, therefore, to preface it by a short sketch of the circumstances which have led 

 to its being undertaken, as likewise by some notice of those zoologists who have preceded me in 

 endeavouring to advance the knowledge of this branch of Natural History in the East ; and I have 

 added comments on such matters connected therewith as seem to be of interest to the scientific pubHc, 

 or relate to the economic value of the Fisheries. It is now many years since I commenced to 

 devote time and no small labour to these subjects. From 1859 to 1862 I was on duty at Cochin, 

 and spent most of my spare hours in collecting specimens of the fish along that coast. The 

 examples secured and preserved were numerous, and the results are embodied in a work, " The Fishes 

 of Malabar," which may perhaps be considered the germ from which the present and more 

 pretentious treatise has taken its origin. 



The notice of Government was drawn to the subject in the following manner. In 1867 Her 

 Majesty's Secretary of State for India, in a despatch to the Madras Government, directed their 

 attention to a letter from Sir Arthur Cotton, in which he said he " should suppose that the 

 injury to the coast fisheries must be very great, now that seven of the principal rivers on the East 

 coast" are barred by irrigation works that had been constructed. In consequence of this I was 

 directed by the Government to visit the " anicuts " or weirs in the Madras Presidency, in order that 

 the Heads of Departments might have fuller information on the subject than had been offered 

 them up to that date. This order was carried out as follows : — first the districts to the 

 south of Madras were inspected, and then those to the north. I was afterwards instructed to 

 continue these inquiries, and went to Orissa and Lower Bengal, afterwards to British Burma, and 

 at the end of 1869 to the Andaman Islands. An accident which occurred during these investi- 

 gations compelled me to proceed to Europe in March, 1870, but this enabled me to visit many of 

 the fish-ladders in use in England, and I returned at the end of the year to India. 



My visits to the irrigation works on the rivers of Southern India in 1867, had, however, 

 completely established the fact that the fish which, prior to the erection of the weirs, had 

 ascended the rivers during the season of the rains for the purpose of spawning, were not only 

 prevented from proceeding up stream to spots suitable for the deposition of their ova, but 

 were collected in such vast numbers immediately below these weirs, which they vainly attempted 

 to pass, that the wholesale manner in which they were caught by the native fishermen almost 

 amounted to extermination of the spawning fish of each season. The want of legislation 



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