Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society/Volume 84/Preface
Preface.
Literature dealing with our local Fish and Fisheries is wanting.
The members of the Profiteering Commission (1920) who were "impressed and much handicapped by the absence of any recorded information relating to fish and fisheries," made certain recommendations for the future control and organisation of the fishing industry and these recommendations have received the approval of the Government.
With the best will in the world, the task of Legislators and Fishery Officers who have no data or records to guide them, and are therefore unable to discuss our local fish and fisheries except in vague terms, would be as fruitless in the future as it has been in the past.
Allowing, therefore, that recorded information in the form of a hand-book on Malayan Fishes is wanted and wanted at once, the difficulty arises that there is no one qualified or likely to be qualified for some years to write such a book.
The ichthyologists are not linguists and the linguists are not ichthyologists.
This being the position, the writer has the temerity to offer this small work, which he hopes will be of some temporary service until, in due course, the importance of the Malayan Fisheries has been established and Fishery bulletins written by specialists are produced.
The inclusion in this volume of several hundred Malay names of fishes, many published for the first time, should lighten the labours of scientists and help the Fishery Officers.
No fishes have been included which have not been definitely recorded as inhabiting the seas, estuaries and fresh water of the Malay Peninsula.
The size of the work would have been trebled if fishes of Borneo, Java, Sumatra and the Malay Archipelago generally, together with Siam and Burma, had been admitted. It is safe to prophesy that most of the fishes of those countries inhabit our waters and will be recorded later on.
This work may be taken, therefore, as dealing, very inadequately, with one-fourth of our fishes only and probably not one-half of the local Malay names have been mentioned. The writer knows very little about fresh water fishes.
The material in this book has been put together hastily during a period of five months in the intervals of considerable pressure of other work.
The plates have been beautifully prepared by Mr. Black of the Survey Department, Kuala Lumpur, but it is to be regretted that many of the fishes have been badly displayed and badly photographed.
The writer was unable to find time to be present at the Clyde Terrace Market, Singapore, where most of the photographs were taken, the fish being borrowed for a minute or two from the stall-holders, and in consequence, the specific identification of every fish from a poor photograph has been impossible, though the writer feels confident that the families and genera have been correctly given.
The writer's thanks are due to Messrs. Stead and Roughley. But for their works on Australian Fishes, from which quotations have been freely made, this work could not have been written.
To the Directors and Staff of the F. M. S. Museums and the Raffles Museum, Singapore, who have granted me facilities for consulting the reference libraries and permission to examine and photograph specimens in the Museum collections, I desire to express my indebtedness.
C. N. Maxwell,
Director of Supplies.
Singapore, 16th June, 1921.
