Of these richly coloured fishes the most familiar in the Indian seas are the Pteroids.  They are well known on the coast of Africa, and thence eastward to Polynesia; but they do not extend to the west coast of America, and are utterly absent from the Atlantic.  The rays of the dorsal and pectoral fins are so elongated, that when specimens were first brought to Europe it was conjectured that these fishes have the faculty of flight, and hence the specific name of “volitans” But this is an error, for, owing to the deep incisions between the pectoral rays, the pteroids are wholly unable to sustain themselves in the air.  They are not even bold swimmers, living close to the shore and never venturing into the deep sea.  Their head is ornamented with a number of filaments and cutaneous appendages, of which one over each eye and another at the angles of the mouth are the most conspicuous.  Sharp spines project on the crown and on the side of the gill-apparatus, as in the other sea-perches, Scorpaena, Serranus, &c., of which these are only a modified and ornate form.  The extraordinary expansion of their fins is not, however, accompanied by a similar development of the bones to which they are attached, simply because they appear to have no peculiar function, as in flying fishes, or in those where the spines of the fins are weapons of offence.  They attain to the length of twelve inches, and to a weight of about two pounds; they live on small marine animals, and by the Singhalese the flesh (of some at least) is considered good for table.  Nine or ten species are known to occur in the East Indian Seas, and of these the one figured above is, perhaps, the most common.

[Illustration:  PTEROIS VOLITANS.]

Another species known to occur on the coasts of Ceylon is the Scorpaena miles, Bennett, or Pterois miles, Guenther[1], of which Bennett has given a figure[2], but it is not altogether correct in some particulars.

[Footnote 1:  The fish from the Sea of Pinang, described by Dr. CANTOR with this name (Catal.  Mal.  Fish. p. 42), is again different, and belongs to a third species.]

[Footnote 2:  Fishes of Ceylon, Pl. ix.]

In the fishes of Ceylon, however, beauty is not confined to the brilliancy of their tints.  In some, as in the Scarus harid_, Forsk[1], the arrangement of the scales is so graceful, and the effect is so heightened by modifications of colour, as to present the appearance of tessellation, or mosaic work.

[Footnote 1:  This is the fish figured by BENNETT as Sparus pepo. Fishes of Ceylon, Plate xxviii.]

[Illustration:  SCARUS HARID.  After Bennett.]

Fresh-water Fishes.—­Of the fresh-water fish, which inhabit the rivers and tanks, so very little has hitherto been known to naturalists[1], that of nineteen drawings sent home by Major Skinner in 1852, although specimens of well-known genera, Colonel Hamilton Smith pronounced nearly the whole to be new and undescribed species.