Dr. Bancroft on Jamaican Fishes, &c. 409 
Art. LVI. Account of several Fishes and other Animals of 
Jamaica. By E.N. Bancrort, M.D. In a Letter to 
the Editor. 
Kingston, Jamaica, 24th July, 1830. 
Dear Sir, 
I HAVE not been able to acknowledge sooner the favour of your letter 
of the 17th of last November. I was indeed partly induced to delay my 
answer from the expectation you had therein held out to me of a farther 
communication with such portions of the Zoological Journal as relate to 
the objects I sent to you twelve months ago; but these I have not yet 
had the satisfaction of receiving. 
This letter will, I believe, be forwarded by the packet, which is to sail 
on the 3d of next month; and in it I shall give you some account of the 
contents of several packages which I proposed to send you by the ship 
New Prospect, that will sail for London at the end of this month. The 
first package to be mentioned is a cask with compressed sides (as it may 
to you be termed) called a breaker, a form which I preferred on account 
of one of the Fishes to be sent in it, a Cephalopterus hitherto, I believe, 
unknown. 
I have to regret that this specimen in particular, and some others of 
the Fishes, are not quite in their natural colours. I had directed the 
first to be put into strong brine, and this it seems was done by a servant 
in a large copper boiler, there being no other vessel at hand to contain 
a fish of its size and shape, and the brine was occasionally renewed to 
prevent putrefaction; but I had the mortification to find very lately, when 
I had the fish taken out to be put into the breaker, that some portion of 
its surface had acquired a green colour from the copper, an alteration I 
had not been previously informed of, It appears that the servants were 
able to remove some part of the green colour; but I was afraid of their 
injuring the skin if they continued to rub it; and although J hesitated for 
some time about sending this specimen, yet I thought it best to send it in 
