vi PREFACE. 



A detailed account of the Survey made on behalf of the Egyptian Government is 

 given by Mr. Loat himself in the Introduction to this work. It gives me great 

 pleasure to publicly express my high appreciation of the work done by Mr. Loat. 

 The enormous series of specimens collected and excellently preserved by him, 

 accompanied by valuable notes and coloured sketches, have very materially increased 

 our knowledge of the Fishes of the Nile. But an account of the Nile Fishes would 

 have been incomplete without a knowledge of those inhabiting the lakes which feed 

 the mighty river. And in this respect I have been most fortunate in being able to 

 describe large collections made by Mr. E. Degen in Lakes Tsana and Victoria, 

 supplementing the smaller collections made by the late Mr. W. G. Doggett in the 

 latter lake and presented to the British Museum by Sir Harry Johnston and Col. Delme 

 Kadcliffe, and from Lakes Albert and Albert Edward by Mr. J. E. S. Moore and the 

 late Mr. J. S. Budgett. I am indebted to Capt. S. Flower for many interesting 

 observations and a considerable number of specimens from various parts of the Nile, 

 and to Dr. F. Werner for the loan or gift of some rare fishes obtained by himself, 

 principally in the Bahr-el-Gebel. 



I am also under obligation to the Curators of some of the principal Museums of 

 the Continent for the facilities they have afforded me in the examination of fishes 

 entrusted to their care. Prof. L. Vaillant has, with his usual kindness, allowed me 

 access to the types of Geoffroy St. Hilaire's and Cuvier and Valenciennes's species in 

 the Paris Museum, and he has supplied me with examples of some of the Victoria 

 Nyanza fishes recently discovered by M. Alluaud and described by Dr. J. Pellegrin. 

 The late Prof. F. Hilgendorf and Dr. P. Pappenheim, of the Berlin Museum, 

 Prof. G. Pfeffer, of the Hamburg Museum, and Dr. 11. Gestro, of the Genoa 

 Museum, have most obligingly answered my many enquiries ; whilst the Directors of 

 the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfort/M. have liberally granted me the loan of the 

 Lake Tsana fishes collected and described by RiippelL 



I would have been greatly hampered in my work had I not been able to institute 

 a direct comparison of the Fishes of the Nile with those of the other water-systems 

 with which they are identical or nearly related. In this respect also I have been 

 fortunate, as, in addition to the material previously existing in the British Museum, 

 large collections have been at my disposal from the Congo, entrusted to me by the 



