PREFACE. 



In claiming the indulgence of the Public Critic, the Author begs to 

 state, that when he first undertook to employ his hours of leisure from 

 the official duties of the Magistracy and other situations which he 

 held in the Island of Ceylon, he had no higher view than that of 

 devotion to the interests of the Literal and Agricultural Society, 

 which had been established in 1820, under the auspices of the then 

 Acting Governor, Major-General Sir Edward Barnes, the present 

 Patron and President. 



To the late highly-respected Sir Hardinge Giffard, at that time 

 Chief Justice; to Henry Augustus Marshall, Esq. Auditor-General ; 

 to Charles Edward Layard, Esq. the present Paymaster-General ; 

 and to the Secretary of the Society, Captain T. B. Gascoyne, Acting 

 Deputy Quarter-Master-General, the Author feels indebted for 

 their recommendations to make the drawings more beneficial to 

 himself, and at the same time more extensively known to the 

 admirers of Natural History ; of the former he was as anxious, as of 

 the latter proud to be considered equal to the task. 



The earnestness of such disinterested friendship, induced a farther 

 exercise of its characteristic qualities. It was not until the Governor 

 had, at the request of these gentlemen, inspected the MSS. and 

 thereon voluntarily called a Special Meeting of the Literary and Agri- 

 cultural Society, that the Author had any intimation of the favorable 

 opinion the Society had beeen pleased to form of the publication 

 of the " Fishes of Ceylon, after drawings from Living Specimens," 

 or of the handsome manner in which His Excellency had supported 

 his recommendations of the work, by an advance towards its publica- 

 tion, as well on the behalf of Government, as his own. There are 

 many persons of respectability, in England and in Ceylon, who 

 have compared the drawings with the living Originals. 



