INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
I N introducing the present paper it should be explained that, with the 
exception of the Gohiidae^ which are of considerable bionomic interest, 
we made no serious attempt to collect marine fish at Patani or elsewhere. 
The few that we sent home are either of ethnographical importance or were 
purchased casually in the market or from fishermen, to fill up space in a 
vessel containing other specimens. Fishing is the principal industry of 
Patani, and the bay should prove an excellent collecting ground for shallow- 
water forms ; the number that could be obtained with a little trouble would 
certainly be very large. Fishing is carried on mainly in three ways : — by 
means of large shrimping-nets, worked either by one man or by two, in 
water not more than four feet deep ; by long drift-nets, which are laid some 
distance out to sea, where there is as much as thirty fathoms of water ; and 
by seines, sometimes as much as two or three hundred fathoms long, which 
are used both on the seaward beach of Cape Patani, where there is an evenly 
sloping bottom of hard sand, and from little boats in the bay, where the 
bottom is muddy and the nets are shorter. The marine gobies in our collection 
were either shot with a collector’s gun or caught for us by little boys, while 
the other specimens came mostly from the seines or the drift-nets. 
HERBERT C. ROBINSON 
