PREFACE. 
y 
From what has been said no more is meant to be inferred, than that 
coloured drawings, in regard to most Indian fishes, can be accurately 
executed in India only; that such as have been done in Europe from 
wet or dry specimens are often faulty; and that some figures in Bloch’s 
justly celebrated work, cannot, in point of colour, claim exemption. It 
may be proper to add, that notwithstanding my own failure, I entertain 
no doubt of the success of Indian artists under better instruction than I 
was capable of giving. 
In the arrangement of the Collection, there is little deviation from the 
Linnean classification. Of the genera newly instituted, one only from 
Bloch has been adopted. 
That the large additions made lately to the catalogue of Indian fishes 
unknown to Artedi and Linneus require new invented genera, can admit 
of little doubt. Many have been formed by Bloch in his late History of 
Fishes; and a much more considerable number by La Cepede in his 
Continuation of Buffon’s Natural History 
Of the merit of these late innovations, unknown to me in India, I do 
not presume to judge. The present collection affording but few instances 
to sanction innovation, I deemed it better to adhere to the classification 
long familiar to me; and when in doubt to what genus the subject 
belonged, to place it nearest the one to which it seemingly bore most 
affinity: leaving it with more experienced naturalists to transfer each to 
its proper station. 
+ Another collection, but of coloured figures, painted by order of M. Balthazar Coyetl, when governor of the 
Molucca Islands, was published at Amsterdam in 1754, and dedicated to his Britannic Majesty. The number of fishes 
in two volumes amount to above four hundred, and most of them agree in shape with the figures in Valentine: in 
colour there is frequent variation, which the Editor in his Preface unsuccessfully attempts to account for. In respect 
to the second volume, the Editor owns that the painter had taken most unjustifiable liberty in colouring; a concession 
that might safely have been extended to the first. 
Eight years before Valentine’s history, a collection professing to be of unknown Indian fishes, had been published 
at Amsterdam by Hen. Ruysch. It contains about four hundred figures, the greater part of which are found in 
Valentine ; they are smaller in size, but equally rude and extravagant. 
The style of drawing in the three above-mentioned collections sufficiently denotes the hand of Indian artists. But 
a resemblance so striking in figures, sketched by different hands at distant periods, must either suppose existing 
originals from which they drew, or admit a coincidence in the sporting of pure fancy more improbable than the utmost 
extravagance of the figures represented. To this may be added, that the original of several figures long held as 
fictitious have lately been well described; justifying an opinion hazarded by the eminent naturalist Pallas, that 
the originals of all will in time be discovered- 
