200 
TRAVELS IN CENTRAL AFRICA. 
Zoologie.^^ (1835.) The other author^ J. J. Rifaud^ has figured 
about twenty fishes in a very coarse nianner_, in his great work^ 
Voyage en Egypte depuis 1805_, jusqu^ en 1827.^^ (Paris. Folio.) 
Beside a figure^ which appears to have been taken from the broad- 
nosed eel_, there is no novelty among them. 
The materials which existed in the European collections at 
the time when Cuvier and Valenciennes^ s general work on fishes 
was published,, had been so well worked out,, that they were not 
enabled to add much to our knowledge of this Fauna. Also Dr. 
Heckel^ who examined the ichthyological collections made by Russ- 
egger during his travels in Egypt and Nubia,, and published a most 
useful historical synopsis of the fishes of the Nile (Russegger^s 
^‘^Reisen.^^ Stuttg.,, 1847. 8vo. Vol. II.), was not more successful, 
three of the four species named by him as new having been pre- 
viously described. In this list sixty-seven species are enumerated 
(the Lake Zana species, and Cyprinodonts which are not found in 
the Nile, not included) ; but nine of them have since been proved 
to be merely synonyms, so that at HeckePs time not quite sixty 
species were known to inhabit this great river. 
Finally, I have to mention that Sir Samuel Baker has given us 
ihe first glimpse of the Fish-Fauna of the great Central African 
lakes to which the course of the river has been traced. He figures 
in ^^The Albert Nyanza,^^ Vol. II., p. I3I, two fishes which are 
evidently Lates niloticus and Lepidosiren. 
How much our knowledge of this Fauna has been advanced by 
Mr. Petherick^s collections is evident from the following list, which 
contains eighty -one species, of which eleven only were not found 
by him, or are not known to me from autopsy. On the other hand. 
