164 Records of the Indian Museum. (Vor. X Vat - 
Another point on which a few words may be desirable is that 
of the use of the names Discognathus and Garra. ‘The former was 
first applied by Heckel! to a group of fishes including species of 
both genera. The original work is not available in India, and we 
have to thank Mr. Tate Regan for the information that Heckei 
did not designate a type-species. Bleeker,’ however, in 1863, 
while accepting Garva as a generic name, recognized Discognathus 
as a subgenus, for which he selected D. vartabilis, a form closely 
allied to D. phryne, as type-species. The fact that he based the 
subgeneric division on the number of barbels, an unimportant 
character, does not invalidate his nomenclature, and if the group 
of which D. variabilis is a member is to be regarded as a distinct 
genus there can be no dispute as to its proper name. 
The status of the name Garra is a little more doubtful. It 
was first proposed by Buchanan ® as that of a division of Cyprinus, 
fora heterogeneous collection of convergent species including forms 
now referred to Cirrhina, Psilorhynchus and Balitora. No type- 
species was selected, but Cyprinus lamta was described first, and 
the name of the division was that given locally to this fish. As 
has been pointed out in a former note in this volume (p. 77), it is 
doubtful what Cyprinus lamta, which may have been a composite 
species, really was; but there can be no doubt that it was a 
member ot set of members of the genus we now call Garra. 
Various other names were applied to species of the same 
genus by the earlier writers on Indian ichthyology, such as Chon- 
drostoma, Goniorhynchus and Platycara. ‘The only one of these 
that need be considered is the last, as the others were originally 
given to fish unrelated to the Indian species. Platycara was 
coined by McClelland in 1838 to take the place of Balitora, Gray, 
which he regarded as barbarous and etymologically incorrect. 
Gray’s Balitora, as is clear from the figure in the “‘ Illustrations ”’ 
(fig. 192, pl. 68) was a Homalopterid, but the only species defin- 
itely assigned to Platycara by McClelland in his earlier work * was 
nasutus, which is equally certainly congeneric with Buchanan’s 
Cyprinus (Garra) lamta. In the same paper McClelland described 
the genus Pstlorhynchus, for another species included by Buchanan 
in his group Garra, and the name Platycara is printed above that 
of Psilorhynchus. No one has disputed McClelland’s right to 
separate this genus from Garra. In a slightly later, more com- 
prehensive and better-known work,’ however, McClelland definitely 
placed Gray’s Balitora maculata in his genus Platycara, and as the 
earlier paper was clearly not meant to be comprehensive, it may 
be assumed that he always intended that this species should be 
what is now called the type-species of the genus. 
! Heckel in Russegger, Rezsen, I, 2, p. 1027 (1843). 
2 Bleeker, Atl. Zchth., III, p. 24 (1863). 
8 Buchanan, ‘‘An Account of the Fishes of the Ganges’”’ (1822). 
4 McClelland, Fourn. As. Soc. Bengal, VII, p. 944 (1838). 
6 McClelland, Aszatie Researches, XIX, p. 246 (1839). 
