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ON THE ICHTHYOLOGY OP THE SEAS OF CHINA AND JAPAN. I87 



Report on the Ichthyology of the Seas of China and Japan. By John 

 Richardson, M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., §c, Medical Inspector of 

 Naval Hospitals. 



The following report is essentially a list of the fish which are known to 

 inhabit the waters of the Chinese empire, to which I have added the Japanese; 

 species that have been named in the ' Fauna Japonica ' of Siebold, edited by 

 Temminck and Schlegel, and now in the course of publication. The po- 

 sition of the southern islands of Japan, in the same parallels of latitude 

 with the northern coasts of China, and with only a narrow sea intervening, 

 would lead us to believe that the species of fish which resort to the op- 

 posing shores of the two kingdoms are the same, and such is the fact as 

 far as our evidence goes. Accurate local catalogues of animals are of much 

 utility to the zoologist, being indispensable instruments for eliciting the geo- 

 graphical distribution of forms and species ; but in respect of documents of 

 this kind, ichthyology is far behind the other departments of natural history. 

 We have ample lists of the quadrupeds, birds, reptiles and plants of most of 

 the larger districts of the globe, but out of Europe we cannot refer to an 

 enumeration of the fish of any country that can be said to approach com- 

 pleteness, with the exception of the ichthyology of the Red sea, which has 

 been made known by the labours of Forskal, Ehrenberg and Ruppell. The 

 fish of Madeira have been catalogued by the Rev. R. T. Lowe, and those of 

 the Canaries, collected by Webb and Bertholet, have been described in the 

 ichthyological part of their work by M. Valenciennes. The fish of British 

 India also have been extensively figured by Russell, Buchanan-Hamilton and 

 M c Clelland; but much comparative examination of the species of that wide 

 country is still required to enable us to distinguish those which are com- 

 mon to other countries or districts of the ocean from those which are pecu- 

 liar to it. Some of the northern states also of the North American union have 

 very laudably caused catalogues to be formed of the animals of their respective 

 territories, and from the great ' Histoire des Poissons ' of Cuvier and Valen- 

 ciennes, we may extract lists, though by no means full ones, of the Acantho- 

 pterygian fish that inhabit the coasts of Brazil, the Caribbean sea, Polynesia, 

 and the Malay archipelago ; but of the ichthyology of the extra-tropical 

 seas of the southern hemisphere, and of the whole range of the North and 

 South American coast washed by the Pacific, it is almost silent. About a 

 score of Japanese and Chinese fish were discovered in the time of Linnaeus 

 by Lagerstroem, Houttuyn, Osbeck and others, and a few were added by 

 Langsdorff, who accompanied the Russian admiral in his voyage to the isles 

 of Japan and the South Sea. With these exceptions, the fish of the eastern 

 coasts of Asia, from the sea of Ochotsk down to Cochin China, were, till 

 very recently, known to European naturalists merely by drawings of native 

 artists, several collections of which are to be found in the British and Paris 

 libraries*. Within the last two years Temminck and Schlegel have com- 

 menced the publication, which we have already alluded to, of Siebold's ich- 

 thyological researches in Japan, and have carried on the work to the eighth 

 fasciculus, and through the great families of Percidce, Triglidce, Scicenidce, 

 SparidcB and Scomberidce. Several novel and interesting forms have been 

 already illustrated in this important work, most of them ranging to the 

 southern coasts of China, and not unknown to English ichthyologists, though 

 published for the first time in the ' Fauna Japonica.' For upwards of fifteen 



* A paper published in the third volume of the Chinese Repository, and partly reprinted 

 by Dr. Cantor in his account of the Flora and Fauna of Chusan (Annals and Mag. of Nat. 

 Hist., vol. ix.), gives a more detailed account of what has been done by Europeans in illus- 

 tration of the natural history of China. 



