ON THE ICHTHYOLOGY OF THE SEAS OF CHINA AND JAPAN. 189 



illustrations. Mr. Reeves deposited in the British Museum specimens of 

 Chinese fish, both dried and preserved in spirits, part of them the very ex- 

 amples which are figured in his drawings. His son, J. R. Reeves, Esq., has 

 likewise presented various fish procured at Macao to the British Museum ; 

 among which are several species not figured in his father's drawings. The 

 Rev. George Vachell, who was Chaplain to the India Company at Macao 

 fifteen years ago, collected about 100 species of fish there, and presented 

 them to the Philosophical Institution at Cambridge, in whose museum they 

 are preserved in spirits, and mostly in good condition. One or two small 

 collections made at Chusan have reached the India House from officers 

 serving there during the late war, and several have been sent to Haslar 

 Hospital by the naval officers employed on various parts of the coast, more 

 especially by R. A. Bankier, Esq., surgeon in the Royal Navy, and Captain 

 Sir Edward Belcher, whose specimens are figured in the ' Ichthyology of 

 the Voyage of the Sulphur,' recently published by aid from the Treasury 

 under the auspices of the Government. The College of Surgeons of Lon- 

 don also possesses a small number of Chinese fish, procured by Sir Everard 

 Home in the estuary of the Yang tsze keang, the great river which falls 

 into the entrance of the Yellow sea. An assemblage of Chinese fish, ex- 

 ceeding all these in number, exists in the Chinese collection, made by Mr. 

 Dunn, and now exhibiting at Hyde Park. The proprietor most liberally 

 permitted me to examine this important collection ; but owing to my re- 

 sidence at a distance from London, and the way in which the bottles hold- 

 ing the fish are secured in screwed-up cases,' I have not been able to avail 

 myself of this permission to the necessary extent for the identification 

 of known species or the description of new ones. In the same collection 

 there are also many coloured drawings of fish. The following list is drawn 

 up from these various sources. Looking to the number of species which it 

 includes, I cannot but consider it as a pretty full enumeration of the fresh- 

 water and marine fish of the eastern coasts of the Chinese empire, and it will 

 furnish the inquirer into the geographical distribution of forms with several 

 important facts. The ichthyology of China forms a material link in the 

 evidence by which we are enabled to trace the variations in the numbers and 

 grouping of species from the seas of Ochotsk, Kamtschatka and Behring's 

 Strait southwards, by the Philippines, Malay archipelago, Javan sea and 

 Torres Straits to the coasts of Australia. The < Ichthyology of the Voyage 

 of the Erebus and Terror,' under the command of Sir James Clark Ross, 

 another work which owes its existence to the support of Government, will 

 contain a much fuller account of the fish of the higher southern latitudes 

 than any previous ichthyological publication, together with figures of at least 

 100 new species, some of them taken beyond the 71st parallel. In fact, the 

 gradual disappearance of the arctic forms in the seas of Japan and the north 

 of China, their replacement by other assemblages in the warmer latitudes, 

 and their re-appearance on the coasts of Van Diemen's Land, the southern 

 islands of New Zealand, the Aucklands and other antarctic lands, may be 

 followed with equal, if not more accuracy than similar gradations can be 

 traced through the Atlantic ocean. 



General ichthyology has not made sufficient progress to enable us to de- 

 duce the laws by which the geographical distribution of species is regulated. 

 The only modern work which professes to describe all the species is yet in 

 progress, and judging from the numerous additions of new species made by 

 every scientific expedition that has left Great Britain or France since the pub- 

 lication of the first ten or twelve volumes of the ' Histoire des Poissons,' we 

 are assured that very many fish remain to be incorporated in it when it sees 



