INDIAN CYPRINIDZ. 219 
amounting to 150 beautifully executed, and including nearly all the un- 
published species on which my painters had been so long employed, with 
the specific names in Buchanan’s hand-writing marked under the figures, so as 
to leave no doubt or difficulty in referring them to corresponding descriptions 
in the Gangetic Fishes. I am not prepared to state how many unfigured 
species this interesting collection contains, except in the particular family 
which is the subject of this paper. Along with these drawings I received inti- 
mation from Dr. Wallich that two folio volumes of manuscripts and drawings 
on general zoological subjects by the late Dr. Buchanan still remain at the 
Gardens. The descriptions alluded to may probably serve as a key to 
Hardwicke’s Illustrations, into which I perceive several figures of Cyprinide 
have been accurately copied except in the colouring, from Buchanan’s drawings ; 
and as no descriptions of the plates of Hardwicke’s work have been yet 
to my knowledge published, the source from whence the figures in question 
came does not transpire, and there is no allusion to it on the plates; at any 
rate it is unfair to General Hardwicke as it is to Dr. Buchanan, and to all 
who are engaged in pursuits connected with the Natural History of this or any 
other country, to have the unpublished works of any man shut up for 
twenty-two years in a library that is not open to the public.* 
* Buchanan’s Researches regarding the fishes of India commenced on his arrival in the country 
in 1794, and ended with the publication of the Gangetic Fishes in 1822. Anything that tended to 
lessen the value of a work that occupied so much of such a life is to be regretted. It is stated in a 
biographical notice of Buchanan in Chamber’s Lives of Scotchmen, that on his departure from India 
he was deprived by the Marquis of Hastings of all his extensive drawings and papers relating to 
every branch of Natural History, particularly Botany, “ although to me,” quoting his own words to the 
Edinburgh Philosophical Society, ‘‘ as an individual they were of no value, as I preserve no collections, 
and have no occasion to convert them into money, but I was merely desirous of seeing them safely 
deposited in the India House.” In deciding that Buchanan’s papers should be retained in India, it 
may be presumed that the object was that they should here be rendered more useful to the country 
than they could be in England. It could scarcely have occurred to the Marquis of Hastings that 
these works would be consigned to oblivion and the author in consequence superseded by his successors. 
