Preface. 
Literature dealing with our local Fish and Fisheries is wanting. 
The members of the Profiteering Commission (1920) who were 
“impressed and much handicapped by the absence of any recorded 
information relating to fish and fisheries,’ made certain recom- 
mendations for the future control and organisation of the fishing 
industry and these recommendations have received the approval of 
the Government. 
With the best will in the world, the task of Legislators and 
Fishery Officers who have no data or records to guide them, and 
are therefore unable to discuss our local fish and fisheries except 
in vague terms, would be as fruitless in the future as it has been 
in the past. 
Allowing, therefore, that recorded information in the form of 
a hand-book on Malayan Fishes is wanted and wanted at once, the 
difficulty arises that there is no one qualified or likely to be qualified 
for some years to write such a book. 
The ichthyologists are not linguists and the lnguists are not 
ichthyologists. 
This being the position, the writer has the temerity to offer 
this small work, which he hopes will be of some temporary service 
until, in due course, the importance of the Malayan Fisheries has 
been established and Fishery bulletins written by specialists are 
produced, 
The inclusion in this volume of several hundred Malay names 
of fishes, many published for the first time, should lighten the 
labours of scientists and help the Fishery Officers, 
No fishes have been included which have not been definitely 
recorded as inhabiting the seas, estuaries and fresh water of the 
Malay Peninsula. 
The size of the work would have been trebled if fishes of 
Borneo, Java, Sumatra and the Malay Archipelago generally, to- 
gether with Siam and Burma, had been admitted. It is safe to 
prophesy that most of the fishes of those countries inhabit our 
waters and will be recorded later on. 
This work may be taken, therefore, as dealing, very inadequate- 
ly, with one-fourth of our fishes only and probably not one-half 
of the local Malay names have been mentioned. The writer knows 
very little about fresh water fishes. 
