INTRODUCTION. 
To study tlie wants of a people, to inquire into the history, language, habits, and customs of a 
nation, is generally deemed a duty on the part of its rulers : but hardly any objects of research are 
more worthy of the attention of a Government than the sources whence the food of the population 
is derived, or the nature of the articles most adapted for its manufacturing processes, or best fitted 
in the raw state for its home or foreign trade. In India the details of Native agriculture have 
been carefully studied, if they have not been improved; the earth has been ransacked for its 
minerals; the forests have been explored for their timber; the land for its agricultural capabilities, 
even the atmosphere for its meteorological variations; and in all these matters Government has 
wisely shown its interest; but the fish with which the fresh waters of Hindustan teem, and 
which abound in the seas that wash her coasts, have rarely met with attention from those in 
authority, or even from individuals whose private tastes have led them towards the cultivation 
of zoological science. 
In the British possessions in the East, no branch of natural history has received less assistance 
than Ichthyology; its utility seems to have been questioned, its scientific value nearly ignored. 
Searching among the records of past times, we find that so long ago as 1777 the Dutch East 
India Company directed the Governor of Cochin, then their chief town in India, to send them 
information on all branches of natural history and the allied sciences; but though rare animals 
and birds were ordered to be transmitted to Europe in spirit, fish were not specially alluded to. 
On the capture of Cochin in 1795, the whole of Malabar came under British rule; but so little 
has since been done in inquiring into its natural riches, that the National Collection in London* 
appears to have obtained one solitary ichthyological species from the whole of that territory in the 
course of seventy years, during which period the French and other European collections have 
received and preserved much of what we have neglected, and observations on the sea fishes of 
Western India, are to be sought for, not in English works, but in the proceedings of French Societies, 
and in the splendid “Histoire Naturelle des Poissons” of Cuvier and Valenciennes. 
The first, if not the last, direct assistance which the Court of Directors of the English East 
India Company gave to Ichthyology was by the publication in 1803 of Dr. Russell's work, describ¬ 
ing 200 Fishes from the Coast of Coromandel , the materials for which were collected by the Author 
whilst stationed at Vizagapatam—a book which Cuvier observed was the most important up to 
* See the Catalogues of the British Museum, viz.: Chondropterygii, by Dr. Gray, 1851 ; Lophobran- 
chiate Fish, Dr. Kaup, 1856 ; Apodal Fish, Dr. Kaup, 1856 ; and 5 vols. of Dr. Gunther’s Catalogues 
of the Fishes of the British Museum. The E. I. Museum possesses neither mammal, bird or fish from 
the whole of Malabar, with the exception of those presented by myself. 
