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188 REPORT— 1845. PHTHOL AWE WO 
years materials for an ample account of the fish of China have existed in 
England. John Reeves, Esq., who was long resident at Macao, filling an 
important office in the employ of the India Company, with an enlightened 
munificence, caused beautiful coloured drawings, mostly of the natural size, 
to be made of no fewer than 340 species of fish which are brought to the 
markets at Canton. These drawings are executed with a correctness and 
finish which will be sought for in vain in the older works on ichthyology, 
and which are not surpassed in the plates of any large European work of the 
present day. The unrivalled brilliancy and effect of the colouring, and cor- 
rectness of profile, render them excellent portraits of the fish they are intended 
to represent ; but further details of a technical kind, such as the distribution 
of the teeth in the roof of the mouth, the numbers of the gill-rays, and the 
fine serratures and denticulations on the edges of the opercular pieces, are 
required for the location of the species in their proper genera. Such minute 
characters, which can be detected, in many instances, only by aid of a lens, 
require to be exaggerated to be shown in a drawing, and indeed, when the 
serratures of the gill-pieces were sufficiently large to be conspicuous to the 
naked eye, the Chinese artist has seldom failed to represent them. Mr. 
Reeves had four copies of these drawings made. One set, which he presented 
to General Hardwicke, is bound up with that officer’s large collection of 
sketches of Indian fish, in four folio volumes, which he bequeathed to the 
British Museum. These volumes have been inspected by many English and 
foreign ichthyologists, and, among others, by Muller and Henle, who refer to 
them in their excellent ‘ Plagiostomen.’ Another copy, left by Mr. Reeves at 
Macao with Mr. Beale, formed the groundwork of the enumeration of Chi- 
nese fish in Bridgeman’s ‘ Chrestomathy,’ in which, by the way, very nume- 
rous mistakes in the generic names occur. A third copy, which he liberally 
lent to me, is the foundation of this report*. The Banksian library also 
contains a work entitled ‘ Figure Piscium Sinensium a Pictore Sinensi pictee,’ 
which is referred to by M. Valenciennes in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
volumes of the ‘ Histoire des Poissons,’ treating of the Cyprinide ; the same 
library possesses a Japanese treatise on fishes, with their Chinese names ap- 
pended, and with coloured plates ; and a manuscript work entitled, “ Descrip- 
tions of Animals,” being an account, in the Linnzean method, of the various - 
species, both terrestrial and marine, observed in a voyage to India and China, 
with pen and ink figures of small size, but well-executed. The author is un- 
known. There are also several Chinese works in the library of the British 
Museum containing figures of fishes, but they are far inferior to the others 
we have mentioned, and look more like fanciful designs than natural history 
* General Hardwicke began his collections of illustrations of Asiatic zoology in the last 
century, and continued them till his final return to this country in 1818. He lost many 
specimens and the fruit of much labour by three several shipwrecks ; but this, instead of 
damping his ardour, roused him to fresh exertions, and he was busy up to the time of his 
death in preparing his collections for publication, the scientific part having been undertaken 
by Mr. Gray. Among the drawings of fish which he procured, there are some by Major 
Neeld, others by Major Farquhar, and a considerable number copied from the drawings of 
Buchanan Hamilton, by that gentleman’s consent, and by the same artists which he em- 
ployed. This is mentioned because a charge of piracy has been made’in the Calcutta Journal 
against General Hardwicke, who was however too high-minded to appropriate to himself 
the labours of others without due acknowledgement; and the careful references in his own 
writing on the drawings of Buchanan Hamilton, show that he had no intention of claiming 
anything that belonged to that distinguished naturalist. The General bequeathed his speci- 
mens and the whole of his collections of drawings, amounting to twenty folio volumes, to the 
British Museum, and also set apart’'a sum of money to defray the expense of publishing the 
scientific description of them. His collections have been deposited, as he wished, im the 
national institution, but his intentions respecting the publication have been entirely frustrated 
by a chancery suit, which was instituted soon after his death. 
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