Notes

Abstract

SOME weeks since it was stated that the collection of fishes made by Mr. Francis Day, Inspector-General of Indian Fisheries, would be deposited in the New Indian Museum at South Kensington. It was offered to and accepted by the Secretary of State for India, but it was subsequently considered that neither the expense of bottles in which to exhibit them, nor of spirit for their preservation, could be rightly debited to the resources of India. Mr. Wood, the well-known artist, very liberally proposed, in exchange for the type collection, numbering about 1,200 species, to increase Mr. Day's plates in his work, the “Fishes of India,” from 160 to 190, or to 1,140 figures. The Director of the Indian Museum in Calcutta hearing of this arrangement, proposed to the trustees that he should secure it at once on these terms, and we understand that he has been instructed to do so. It will doubtless render the Museum in Calcutta the most complete in Indian fishes in the world; but whether this collection finding a place in the British Museum might not have proved more beneficial to science we leave for the decision of our readers.