96 F. Day — Monograph of Indian. Cyprinida. [No. 2, 



At the present time the Fish-fauna of large portions of India is 

 almost unknown ; this is more especially evident in the Bombay 

 Presidency, where only Colonel Sykes has written on the fresh- 

 water fishes, and his published notes embrace less than fifty species 

 from the Deccan, twenty of which are very insufficiently described. 

 The ichthyology of most of the Hill-ranges remains still to be 

 discovered, whilst specimens for the local Museums from every 

 locality are greatly needed. 



The literature olthe Carps of India is extremely scanty, being 

 as follows : Russell, in 1803, in his u Fishes of Yizagapatam" only 

 records three, all of which probably belong to a single species. 

 Hamilton Buchanan in 1822, in the " Fishes of the Ganges" 

 records ninety-five carps, but amongst them are several varieties. 

 McClelland in 1839, in the " Transactions of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal" published a Memoir on the "Indian Cyprinid^e," record- 

 ing one hundred and thirty-two species, many of which are con- 

 sidered in these pages as synonyms. Colonel Sykes in 1831, wrote 

 his " Fishes of the Dukhun" published in 1841, in the " Transac- 

 tions of the Zoological Society of London ;" in it he records twenty- 

 seven carps, the majority of which are insufficiently described. 

 Valenciennes in 1834, in Belanger's ''Voyage aux Indes Orien- 

 tales" describes a few carps. Cuvier and Valenciennes in 1842- 

 1844, in their " Histoire naturelle des poissons" give many Indian 

 Cypbinidje, but species sometimes occur more than once, and 

 occasionally in different genera. 



Dr. Jerdon, in 1849, in the " Madras Journal of Lit. and 

 Science" wrote two papers on the " Fresh-water Fishes of South- 

 ern India" describing sixty-two species of carps, personally 

 collected, ten of which apparently were previously unknown. Dr. 

 Bleeker in 1853, published in Batavia, " Nalezingen op de ichtho- 

 logische fauna van Bengalen en Hindostan." Mr. Blyth in 1858 

 and 1860, communicated a few papers on fish, including carps, 

 collected in Bengal, Burma, and Ceylon, in the " Proceedings of 

 the Asiatic Society of Bengal." 



Irrespective of the "Fishes of Malabar," 1865, I have between 

 1865 and 1871, recorded observations on Indian carps in the 

 u Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London." The last and 



