II 



Report of the British Association for 1845, but there is no 

 foreign work on the fishes of China like Dr. Day's exhaus- 

 tive treatise on the fishes of India. 



The collection of fish from Swatow, consisting of about 

 170 different specimens, were wrapped up in linen and 

 packed in cotton saturated with spirits of wine, and 

 arrived in perfect , condition. Coloured drawings of the 

 specimens were made by Chinese artists, immediately 

 upon the fish being taken from the water, and these 

 specimens form a kind of picture gallery in the 

 Chinese Court. Similar drawings on a smaller scale 

 were taken of the fish of South Formosa, of which there 

 are ninety specimens exhibited. Nearly all the fish 

 enumerated in the Catalogue (pp. 32 to 40) are fit for 

 food, and amongst them are soles, eels, mullets, perch, 

 and many other kinds that are familiar to us here. The 

 salmon and trout are missing, but Mr. Wilmot, the Cana- 

 dian Commissioner, is confident that they can be success- 

 fully introduced and reared in Chinese waters. There is 

 also exhibited a variety of crabs, nearly all of which are 

 used for food, whilst the shells are turned into scoops or 

 other useful domestic articles. 



nth. History and Literature of Fishing. — The Chinese 

 possess very old works relating to fish and fisheries, as 

 well as scrolls, mottoes, tablets, &c. Some of these are 

 displayed on the sides of the Chinese Court. They 

 carry the literature backwards into remote antiquity — to 

 centuries before the dawn of Western literature on 

 the subject. The Chinese Commission for the Fisheries 

 Exhibition had, moreover, the advantage of securing 

 the personal co-operation of the Chinese Minister in 

 England, the Marquis Tseng, and His Excellency himself 

 contributed two large scrolls and various characters, written 



