<I NOTES ON FISH FROM INDIA AND 
PRRs WET bs CREP Thoms 
Gal INE WS PA Ce S: 
By \e-t. JENKINS. 7b9¢: 1(Lond:)- D.Sc. (Wales), ‘ete. 
Superintendent, Lancashire and Western Sea Fisheries. 
) 
I.—ON A COLLECTION OF FISHES MADE By W. T. BLANFORD 
IN 1872 IN PERSIA AND BALUCHISTAN. 
In 1872 Mr. W. T. Blanford accompanied Major St. John in a 
journey from Gwadar on the shores of the Arabian Sea to Shiraz, 
Isfahan and Tehran,! during which collections of zoological material 
were made. The reports on the Mammalia, Aves, Reptilia and 
Amphibia were shortly afterwards published,*? but the collections 
of fish and invertebrata, ‘‘ being comparatively few in number,’’ 
have apparently never yet been worked out. The present collec- 
tion, which is only a part of that which Blanford made, was 
procured partly in what is now British Baluchistan and partly in 
Persia proper. 
The specimens of Scaphiodon are from Baluchistan, some being 
from a stream near the fort of Gishtigan in the Bampusht high- 
land. Gishtigan is on the Kulushta river which drains south 
through the Nihing river into the Dashti and so into the Indian 
Ocean. Other examples of Scaphiodon are labelled Baluchistan 
simply, while still others are from a stream running into the desert 
at Kalagan at a height of 3,500 feet. The Cyprinodontide are all 
from the vicinity of Shirar, in Southern Persia. 
Although collected in 1872 the specimens do not appear to 
have reached the Indian Museum at Calcutta until 1881, at any 
rate they were not entered in the register until May of that year. 
No less than gI specimens were then entered (Nos. 934I—9431, 
inclusive) ; of these 62 have been examined (Nos. 9392—97, 9402--4, 
9408—18, 9425—31 ; 9419—24, 9363—76, 937791). 
The first 27 specimens had been carefully wrapped up in linen 
and preserved in spirit and they are now, after thirty-seven years, 
in a remarkably good state of preservation. ‘The remaining 35 
were loose in spirit and, although capable of being identified, were 
not nearly as well preserved as the others. They consist almost 
entirely of the new species of Scaphiodon except that there are a few 
| Eastern Persia: An account of the journeys of the Persian Boundary Com- 
mission, 1870-71-72, vol. i, Geography, p. 18, e¢ seg. (London, Macmillan & Co., 
1876). 
2 Tbid.. vol. ii, Zoology and Geology, by W. T. Blanford. 
