PREFACE. 1" 



were disposed of as his Burmese ones had previously been. Part of 1799 was employed in investigating 

 the Fishes of the Ganges and its branches. In 1800 he was commissioned to report upon the state of 

 Malabar, lately conquered from Tippoo Sultan, when he found three new species of carps. In 1802 

 he was sent with Capt. Knox to Nepal, of which he pubhshed a history in 1818, but he restricted his 

 Natural History investigations to botanical pursuits. In 1 806 he was directed to make a comprehensive 

 statistical survey of the territories comprising the Presidency of Bengal as well as of some adjacent 

 districts. This occupied seven years, and it is only those who have had the opportunity of inspecting 

 the vast amount of information his twenty-eight thick folio volumes of MSS. contain, that can 

 appreciate the enormous amount of labour undergone, as well as the extreme accuracy of detail which is 

 there displayed. In 1815 he returned to Europe, but the drawings of fish, &c., he was not permitted to 

 take with him ; and subsequently he appears to have been refused access to his original MS. report, 

 when he desired to publish, at his own cost, the " Fishes of the Ganges," which he did in 1822 in 

 one vol. quarto. It contains descriptions of 269 species, and is illustrated by 97 figures. There is no 

 record of his having brought any specimens to Europe.* 



Cuvier and Valenciennes' " Histoire Naturelle des Poissons" (commenced in 1828, and the last of 

 the volumes of which was pubhshed in 1849) has perhaps done more than any other Ichthyological work 

 in the present century to stimulate a liking for Ichthyology. 



Mr. J. Bennett, of the Ceylon Civil Service, pubhshed in 1830 a beautifully illustrated work 

 containing coloured figures of 30 of the most beautiful and interesting of the Fishes found on the coast 

 of Ceylon. This was intended as the first instalment of a large work on the subject, which, however, 

 was never completed. 



Dr. Cantor, of the Bengal Medical Service, was the next Indian author who wrote upon Fish, in a 

 paper in the "Journal of the Eoyal Asiatic Society," 1839, entitled "Notes respecting some 

 Indian Fishes," being observations he had made while discharging the duties of Surgeon to the 

 Hon. Company's Marine Survey. Subseriuently, in 1850, his "Catalogue of Malayan Fishes" was 

 published in the " Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal." It contains full and accurate descriptions 

 of 292 species, to which are added 14 plates of fish or anatomical details. His collections became the 

 property of the Hon. East India Company, and were transferred to the British Museumt in 1860. 



Dr. John McClelland, of the same service, having been attached to a mission sent to Upper Assam 

 in the winter of 1835-36, devoted the time spent on the river to the examination and figuring of species 

 of fish, J and in 1839 published a memoir on " Indian Cyprinidas" in the second part of the 19th volume 



* See remarks under the head of Blyth, p. v. 



t The Museum at the India House received in 1819 from Br. HorsfieU some fishes ft-om Jav.a ; in 1823, a collection containing 

 fish sent by Dr. Finlayson, Surgeon and Naturalist to Crawfurd's Mission to Siam and Hue, the capital of Cochin China. Dr. Gn^dh's 

 zoological collections made in Afghanistan, and containing fish, were sent to the same Museum by the Bengal Government in 184a, 

 and the following year he personally presented more. The Asiatic Society of Bengal at several times also sent fishes to the India 

 Museum, and so did the Bombay Government in 1851. Mr. Brian Eodson, of the Bengal Civil Service, likewise presented some Nepal 

 and Calcutta fish to the British Museum. 



X General BardwicWs " Illustrations of Indian Zoology," edited by Dr. Gray, were published in 18.'50-35. A majority of the 

 Indian fishes are copies from Ham.-Buch. original figures, of which McClelland observes " although they seem to have been withheld from 

 Buchanan himself, the following drawings from his original collection of unpublished figures of fishes have found their way from the 

 Botanic Gardens (in Calcutta) into Hardwicke's Illustrations without any acknowledgment to point out from whence they were derived." 

 A list of some of these figures follows. "Years have elapsed," says Cantor in 1850, "and no explanation has been offered to 

 Mr. McCklland's just observations." The late Dr. J. E. Gray observed (in a letter to myself, dated January 19th, 1872), " Hamilton 

 and Ilardwicke were great friends, and he allowed his artist to make copies of all his fishes from Mysore and other drawings for 

 General Uardwicke, in whose collection of drawings now in the Museum they are to be seen. Mrs. Gray engraved a large number of 

 the small unfigured species from that series but they have not been published." I may add that I obtained a set of these figures along 

 with some of the late Dr. Jerdon's MSS.; there are six 4to. plates containing -46 figures. 



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