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A Notice of Indian Cyprinidae. = 198 
descriptions of Buchanan were so general that they could not 
by any one be distinguished, he resolved to make the attempt to 
identify them, by collecting all these species and minutely study- 
ing their charactéts: “After perseverance for the better part of 
three years,” to use the words of our author, “occasionally giving 
it up in despair, I succeeded in identifying most of the species 
unfigured by Bu@hanan, as well as in having made two series of 
finished drawings of them, one set for England and one for India.” 
After his paper was ready for publication, our author learned that 
some of Buchanan’s drawings of his Gangetic Fishes, were in the 
government house at the botanie garden in Calcutta—and upon 
investigation, found a collection “amounting to one hundred and 
_ fifty beautifully executed, and including nearly all the unpublish- 
ed 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.” Fortunate 
indeed was it for science, although gross injustice to Buchanan, 
that these drawings should have been thus long concealed ; had 
all the figures appeared in his Gangetic Fishes,” they would? 
have supplied the deficiency in his descriptions, and the rich vol- 
ume before us, would have never been undertaken. Now, after 
having for years examined the swamps and stagnant pools; and 
the mountain streams of India—after having enlisted his numer- 
ous friends in his service, and possessed through their efforts and 
his own, not merely all the species described by Buchanan, but 
many previously unknown—Dr. M’Clelland is not satisfied merely 
to cry out evgyxe, but embodies here a - great amount of informa- 
tion obtained during his researc 1d throws new light 8; 
a ichthyology of the east. * 
The Cyprinide, are arranged by Cuvier in the “ Regne Ani- 
mil ” as the first family of the Malacopterygii abdominales—and ~ 
= mm Jags thus—they are “recognized by the slightly cleft 
ath ; weak jaws, generally edentated, and whose border is - 
vy the intermaxillaries; by the deeply dentated pharyngeals 
ich compose the trifling armature of the jaws, and by the small 
mber of the branchial rays. Their body is scaly, and they 
have no adipose dorsal, such as we shall find in the Siluri and in 
the Salmons. Their stomach has no cul-de-sac, neither are there 
any cecal appendages to their pylorus. Of all the fishes, “= 
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