British Association. 123 
PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.—MEETING 
HELD AT CAMBRIDGE. 
Section of Zoology and Botany. 
June 19, 1845.—The Rev. Professor Henslow in the Chair. 
The following are abstracts of the principal communications laid 
before the Section. 
The first paper read was a Report by Dr. Richardson ‘‘ On the 
Ichthyology of China.” 
Till within a recent period little was known of Chinese fishes. 
Linnzus was acquainted with about a score of Japanese fish ; and a 
few were afterwards added to the list by Langsdorff, who accompa- 
nied the Russian admiral, Knesenstiern, 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 Ochotsic down to Cochin 
China, were till very recently known to European naturalists only from 
Chinese and Japanese drawings, several collections of which are to 
be found in the Paris and British libraries. Yet the fish of the coasts 
of China are abundant, and the fisheries extensive and important. 
Materials for the description of these fishes were not wanting. Mr. 
John Reeves had beautiful coloured drawings, mostly of the size of 
life, made of no fewer than 340 species of fish which are brought to 
the markets in Canton. Copies of these drawings now exist in the 
British Museum. Some fishes have been recently sent from Chusan ; 
other Chinese fishes have been described in the account of the voyage 
of the Sulphur. A collection of 100 fishes made at Canton exists in 
the museum of the Philosophical Society of Cambridge. From these 
and other recent sources the present report was drawn up. The 
author concluded from his researches, that the existence of chains of 
islands or of continuous coast having an east and west tendency pro- 
motes the range of a species or of a group of species. Thus, to take 
the intertropical zone of the ocean, we find very many fish common 
to the Red Sea, the coasts of Madagascar, the Mauritius, the Indian 
Ocean, the southern parts of China, the Philippines, the whole Ma- 
lay Archipelago, the north coasts of Australia, and the entire range 
of Polynesia, including the Sandwich Islands. In the generic forms 
of its freshwater fish, China agrees closely with the peninsula of 
India. If we could suppose the extensive belt above alluded to, 
enclosing more than two-thirds of the circumference of the globe, to 
be suddenly elevated, we should find the remains of fish scattered 
over it to be everywhere very nearly alike; the species having a local 
distribution being comparatively few and unimportant. ‘These spoils 
of fish would of course, in accordance with the observation of Prof. 
E. Forbes, be associated with very various assemblages of mollusks 
and other marine animals, according to the depth at which the de- 
posit took place. This was an important fact for the science of 
geology. 
K2 
