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. [Footnote 1: In extenuation of the little that is known of the fresh-water fishes of Ceylon, it may be observed that very few of them are used at table by Europeans, and there is therefore no stimulus on the part of the natives to catch them. The burbot and grey mullet are occasionally eaten, but they taste of mud, and are not in request. Some years ago the experiment was made, with success, of introducing into Mauritius the _Osphromenus olfax_ of Java, which has also been taken to French Guiana. In both places it is now highly esteemed as a fish for table. As it belongs to a family which possesses the faculty, hereafter alluded to, of surviving in the damp soil after the subsidence of the water in the tanks and rivers, it might with equal advantage be acclimated in Ceylon. It grows to 20 lbs. weight and upwards.] Of eight of these, which were from the Mahawelliganga, and caught in the vicinity of Kandy, five were carps; two were _Leucisci_, and one a _Mastacembelus_ (_M. armatus_, Lacep); one was an _Ophiocephalus_, and one a _Polyacanthus_, with no serræ on the gills. Six were from the Kalanyganga, close to Colombo, of which two were _Helostoma_, in shape approaching the Chætodon; two _Ophiocephali_, one a _Silurus_, and one an _Anabas_, but the gills were without denticulation. From the still water of the lake, close to the walls of Colombo, there were two species of _Eleotris_, one _Silurus_ with barbels, and two _Malacopterygians_, which appear to be _Bagri_.