A Notice of Indian CyprinidcB. 93 



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 characters. " 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 Buchanan, 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 botanic 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 ihrough 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 svqtjxu, but embodies here a great amount of informa- 

 tion obtained during his researches, and throws new light upon 

 the ichthyology of the east. 



The Cyprinidae, are arranged by Cuvier in the " Regno Ani- 

 mal," as the first family of the Malacopterygii abdominales — and 

 are characterized thus — they are "recognized by the slightly cleft 

 mouth ; the weak jaws, generally edentated, and whose border is 

 formed by the intermaxillaries ; by the deeply dentated pharyngeals 

 which compose the trifling armature of the jaws, and by the small 

 number 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 cascal appendages to their pylorus. Of all the fishes, they 



