Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and eBook

James Emerson Tennent
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 892 pages of information about Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and.

Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and eBook

James Emerson Tennent
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 892 pages of information about Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and.

The sharks and rays form about one seventh of our own fish fauna.  They constitute about one tenth or one eleventh of Russell and Cantor’s lists, while among these Ceylon drawings I find not more than twenty, or about one thirtieth of the whole, which can be referred to this group of fishes.  It must be extremely interesting to know whether this circumstance is owing to accident, or to the local peculiarities of Colombo, or whether the fauna of Ceylon really is deficient in such fishes.

The like exceptional character is to be noticed in the proportion of the tribe of flat fishes, or Pleuronectidae.  Soles, turbots, and the like, form nearly one twelfth of our own fishes.  Both Cantor and Russell give the flat fishes as making one twenty-second part of their collection, while in the whole 600 Ceylon drawings I can find but five Pleuronectidae.

When this great collection has been carefully studied, I doubt not that many more interesting distributional facts will be evolved.

* * * * *

Since receiving this note from Professor Huxley, the drawings in question have been submitted to Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, and that eminent naturalist, after a careful analysis, has favoured me with the following memorandum of the fishes they exhibit, numerically contrasting them with those of China and Japan, so far as we are acquainted with the ichthyology of those seas:—­

Cartilaginea. 
                                      China and
                         Ceylon Japan.

Squali 12 15
Raiae 19 20
Sturiones 0 1

Ostinopterygii.

Plectognathi.
  tetraodontidae 10 21
  balistidae 9 19
Lophobranchii
  syngnathidae 2 2
  pegasidae 0 3
Ctenobranchii
  lophidae 1 3
Cyclopodii.
  echeneidae 0 1
  cyclopteridae 0 1
  gobidae 7 35

                                      China and
                         Ceylon Japan.

Percini.
  callionymidae 0 7
  uranoscopidae 0 7
  cottidae 0 13
  triglidae 11 37
  polynemidae 12 3
  mullidae 1 7
  percidae 26 12
  berycidae 0 5
  sillaginidae 3 1
  sciaenidae 19 13
  haemulinidae 6 12
  serranidae 31 38
  theraponidae 8

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