PREFACE. 
Iw claiming the indulgence of the Public Critic, the Author begs to 
state, that when he first undertook to employ his hours of leisure from 
the official duties of the Magistracy and other situations which he 
held in the Island of Ceylon, he had no higher view than that of 
devotion to the interests of the Literary and Agricultural Society, 
which had been established in 1820, under the auspices of the then 
Acting Governor, Major-General Sir Edward Barnes, the present 
Patron and President. 
To the late highly-respected Sir Hardinge Giffard, at that time 
Chief Justice ; to Henry Augustus Marshall, Esq. Auditor-General ; 
to Charles Edward Layard, Esq. the present Paymaster-General ; 
and to the Secretary of the Society, Captain 'T. B. Gascoyne, Acting 
Deputy Quarter-Master-General, the Author feels indebted for 
their recommendations to make the drawings more beneficial to 
himself, and at the same time more extensively known to the 
admirers of Natural History ; of the former he was as anxious, as of 
the latter proud to be considered equal to the task. 
The earnestness of such disinterested friendship, induced a farther 
exercise of its characteristic qualities. It was not until the Governor 
had, at the request of these gentlemen, inspected the MSS. and 
thereon voluntarily called a Special Meeting of the Literary and Agri- 
cultural Society, that the Author had any intimation of the favorable 
opinion the Society had beeen pleased to form of the publication 
of the “ Fishes of Ceylon, after drawings from Living Specimens,” 
or of the handsome manner in which His Excellency had supported 
his recommendations of the work, by an advance towards its publica- 
tion, as well on the behalf of Government, as his own. ‘There are 
many persons of respectability, in England and in Ceylon, who 
have compared the drawings with the living Originals. 

