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ON THE ICHTHYOLOGY OF THE SEAS OF CHINA AND JAPAN. 187 
Report on the Ichthyology of the Seas of China and Japan. By Joun 
Ricuarpson, M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., §¢., Medical Inspector of 
Naval Hospitals. 
Tuer following report is essentially a list of the fish which are known to 
inhabit the waters of the Chinese empire, to which I have added the Japanese 
species that have been named in the ‘ Fauna Japonica’ of Siebold, edited by 
Temminck and Schlegel, and now in the course of publication. The po- 
sition of the southern islands of Japan, in the same parallels of latitude 
with the northern coasts of China, and with only a narrow sea intervening, 
would lead us to believe that the species of fish which resort to the op- 
posing shores of the two kingdoms are the same, and such is the fact as 
far as our evidence goes. Accurate local catalogues of animals are of much 
utility to the zoologist, being indispensable instruments for eliciting the geo- 
graphical distribution of forms and species; but in respect of documents of 
this kind, ichthyology is far behind the other departments of natural history. 
We have ample lists of the quadrupeds, birds, reptiles and plants of most of 
the larger districts of the globe, but out of Europe we cannot refer to an 
enumeration of the fish of any country that can be said to approach com- 
pleteness, with the exception of the ichthyology of the Red sea, which has 
been made known by the labours of Forskal, Ehrenberg and Rippell. The 
fish of Madeira have been catalogued by the Rev. R. T. Lowe, and those of 
the Canaries, collected by Webb and Bertholet, have been described in the 
ichthyological part of their work by M. Valenciennes. The fish of British 
India also have been extensively figured by Russell, Buchanan-Hamilton and 
Mc&Clelland; but much comparative examination of the species of that wide 
country is still required to enable us to distinguish those which are com- 
mon to other countries or districts of the ocean from those which are pecu- 
liar to it. Some of the northern states also of the North American union have 
very laudably caused catalogues to be formed of the animals of their respective 
territories, and from the great ‘ Histoire des Poissons’ of Cuvier and Valen- 
ciennes, we may extract lists, though by no means full ones, of the Acantho- 
pterygian fish that inhabit the coasts of Brazil, the Caribbean sea, Polynesia, 
and the Malay archipelago; but of the ichthyology of the extra-tropical 
seas of the southern hemisphere, and of the whole range of the North and 
South American coast washed by the Pacific, it is almost silent. About a 
score of Japanese and Chinese fish were discovered in the time of Linnzus 
by Lagerstroém, Houttuyn, Osbeck and others, and a few were added by 
Langsdorff, who accompanied the Russian admiral in his voyage to the isles 
of Japan and the South Sea. With these exceptions, the fish of the eastern 
coasts of Asia, from the sea of Ochotsk down to Cochin China, were, till 
very recently, known to European naturalists merely by drawings of native 
artists, several collections of which are to be found in the British and Paris 
libraries*. Within the last two years Temminck and Schlegel have com. 
menced the publication, which we have already alluded to, of Siebold’s ich- 
thyological researches in Japan, and have carried on the work to the eighth 
fasciculus, and through the great families of Percide, Triglide, Scienide, 
Sparide and Scomberide. Several novel and interesting forms have been 
already illustrated in this important work, most of them ranging to the 
southern coasts of China, and not unknown to English ichthyologists, though 
published for the first time in the ‘Fauna Japonica.’ For upwards of fifteen 
* A paper published in the third volume of the Chinese Repository, and partly reprinted 
by Dr. Cantor in his account of the Flora and Fauna of Chusan (Annals and Mag. of Nat. 
Hist., vol. ix.), gives a more detailed account of what las been done by Europeans in illus- 
tration of the natural history of China. 
