6
1^
6
Bulletin of the
British Museum (Natural History)
Historical series Vol 5 1976-77
British Museum (Natural History)
London 1983
Dates of publication of the parts
No 1 23 December 1976
No 2 23 December 1976
No 3 28 July 1977
ISSN 0068-2306
Printed in Great Britain by Henry Ling Ltd. at the Dor'iet Press, Dorchester, Dorset
Contents
Historical Volume 5
Page
No I Francis Day (1829-1889) and his collections of Indian fishes
By P. J. P. Whitehead and P. K. Taiwan 1
No 2 Edward Whitaker Gray (1748-1806), Keeper of Natural Curiosities
at the British Museum
By A. E. Gunther ........ 191
No 3 The publications on Lepidoptera by O. G. and A. Costa and the
nominal taxa described therein
By W. G. Tremewan . . . .211
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) AND HIS
COLLECTIONS OF INDIAN FISHES
■'aPY A, J
.iL \V^
,\^>
P. J. P. WHITEHEAD
AND
P. K. TALWAR
BULLETIN OF
THE BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL HISTORY)
HISTORICAL SERIES Vol. 5 No. i
LONDON: 1976
Copeia, 1978(2), p. 377
© Copyright, 1978, by the American Societx- of
Ichthyologists and Heipetologists
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) AND HIS COL-
LECTIONS OF INDIAN FISHES. By P. J. 1>.
Whitehead and P. K. Talwar. 1976. Bidletin of
the Britisli .Museum (Natural History), Histori-
cal Series, vol. 5, no. 1, 189 p., 318 pls.-'I he
renowned English type writer Peter Whitehead
has done it again, this time in appropriate col-
laboration with the distinguislied Indian ichtliy-
ologist P. K. Talwar. Those of us who also are
in the type writing game are much in the debt of
these two authors, wlio must have devoted many
hundreds of liours to mining for pertinent in-
formation from sources ranging more than half
way round tlie globe and in organizing their
findings into a coherent story and an accessible
foimat.
Tlie heart of the work is compiled into four,
fold-out pages entitled "Table of New Genera
and Species Described by Francis Da\, With
Registered Numbers for Possible Type Speci-
mens In Eleven Institutions." Much of the 189
page treatise is devoted to documentation and
explanation of the table. The many taxono-
misls who will use this table as a working tool in
their researches will be grateful indeed to
Whitehead and Talwar.
\ii imporiant reason for tlie wide dispersal
of Day's collections is ihc unlorlunaie 2,S year
long tjuaiTel between Day and ,\. C. L. C;.
Canther, whicli is descriiied in exhaustive de-
tail, tiie minutiae Ijeing presented and dissected
with zeal and delight (protests to the contrary
notwitlislanding) not evident in the more tem-
pered account by A. E. Gunther (A cenlurv of
zoology at tiie British Museum. Folkestone.
Wm. Dawson and .Sons Ltd. 1975).
.Much of the book is taken up with bibli-
ographic and l)io,graphical accounts, and al-
though neither Hollywood nor even the BBC
will bitl for the script (the prose style runs to
mRl-2()th century fish description), I myself
loimd it of some interest, having alwa\s en-
|o>ed studying the lives of the worthies in whose
footsteps I trudge.
It surely is cavalier to criticize this useful
work, but I do have two negative comments
neither of which should be taken to mitigate
a.gainst its overall excellence. The first concerns
the seemingly endless footnotes and parentheti-
cal comments that present excruciatingly irrele-
\ant details. I suppose that the authors are
making a pretense at social history, and per-
liaps to some small de.gree they succeed, but
mostly these maildening inclusions serve to de-
tract from the stated objectives of the work. .My
second criticism concerns a lack. It surely would
be of value to ichthyologists and historians
alike to know Day's batting average. Who
but Whitehead and Talwar would be better
eijuipped to attempt an approximate tally of
the present day validity ol species described by
Day, master mono.grapher of the Indian fauiia?
-D.^mel' M. Cohen, Syslemalics Laboraloiy.
■\iilioiiul Marine Fisheries Senice-NOAA, Xa-
tional Museum of Xriturnl llisl(m\ n;islii,ii;lnn
D.C. 20560.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) AND HIS
COLLECTIONS OF INDIAN FISHES
LiaRARY >->
BY
P. J. P. WHITEHEAD
A X D
P. K. TALWAR
Pp I -189 ; 4 Plates ; 3 Text-figures
BULLETIN OF
THE BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL HISTORY)
HISTORICAL SERIES Vol. 5 No. i
LONDON: 1976
THE BULLETIN' OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
(natural history), instituted in 1949, is
issued in five series corresponding to the Scientific
Departments of the Museum, and an Historical series.
Parts will appear at irregular intervals as they
become ready. Volumes will contain about three or
four hundred pages, and will not necessarily he
completed within one calendar year.
In 1965 a separate supplementary series of longer
papers was instituted, numbered serially for each
Department.
This paper is Vol. 5, No. 1, of the Historical series.
The abbreviated titles of periodicals cited follow those
of the World List of Scientific Periodicals.
World List abbreviation :
Bull. Br. Mits. nat. Hist. (hist. Ser.]
ISSN 0068-230O
Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History). 1976
BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL HISTORY)
Issued 23 December, 1976 Price £18.00
PREFACE
Among those who served abroad with the Honourable East India Company (or,
following the Indian Mutiny, the Crown) were some who put their education and
interests to good use after duty hours, in spite of the demands of the Mess, the Club
and the trivial social round. In fact, the European communities, which Mathew
Arnold's brother hoped to raise 'from the depths of immorahty, gradually to a state
of Christian earnestness", harboured numerous amateur artists, naturalists, archae-
ologists, embryo-ethnologists and the like, all fascinated with the bizarre world
around them and anxious to explore it. One such man was Francis Day, to whom
India owes its still most comprehensive treatise on Indian fishes.
Francis Day was unusual. His relentless pursuit of a hobby earned him not
only recognition, but also an official post, that of Inspector-General of Fisheries.
In a sense, he paved the way for a later professional class that no doubt proved
more efficient, but which seems in retrospect to have lacked something of the
individuality, the dedication and the sheer grit of the earlier pioneers. To attain
what he did. Day showed a determination that well matched his intellectual abihties.
Our study reveals a strong, even self-righteous and certainly highly critical per-
sonality. Yet, given his great achievements, one is forced to admire his singleness
of purpose and enormous capacity for hard work.
Ichthyology is still much concerned with old collections of fishes and the type
specimens that they contain. For India, Day's collections are of great importance.
They have never been adequately studied and few have reaUzed how many and how
scattered are the institutions that received Day's Indian material. Our biographical
sketch is largely to explain this distribution and to show the extent to which it was
governed, not so much by the future needs of ichthyologists, as by Day's antipathy
to Albert Giinther of the British Museum. Science today is no less prone to such
animosities, but the historical perspective is often a useful tonic.
P. J. P. Whitehead
P. K. Talwar
20 October 1975
Device used by Francis Day as a letter-head
and on envelopes
FRANCIS DAY (i 829-1 889) AND HIS
COLLECTIONS OF INDIAN FISHES
By P. J. P. WHITEHEAD & P. K. TALWAR
CONTENTS
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Sources ....
Biographical Sketch
Early years i82g-^i
India 1852-64
Leave 1864—66
The Fishes of Malabar .
The trout experiment 1866
Fishery work iS6y-y4
The Fishes of India i8y4-y8
Final years .
Disputations with Gunther
Personal, medical and other
Reconciliation
Drawings and illustrations
Day's collections .
Types of Day's species .
Table of possible types
Biographical appendix .
References ...
Index (General)
(Scientific)
Page
5
6
7
20
20
21
23
25
32
41
47
57
59
85
107
108
114
151
154
163
167
174
179
INTRODUCTION
Francis Day (1829-89) was one of the outstanding figures in that phase of ichthy-
ology which called for comprehensive works on the fishes of particular regions.
What Day achieved for Indian ichthyology is closely paralleled by the work of his
near-contemporary Pieter Bleeker (1819-78) in Indonesia, and there are indeed
many similarities in their careers.* Both men made extremely large personal
collections and each crowned his study with a well-illustrated summary of the
fishes of the region (Bleeker's Atlas of 1862-78 and Day's Fishes of India, 1875-88).
That both men were military surgeons, pursuing their studies only in leisure hours
(at least initially in Day's case), is a reflection of the manner in which much natural
• An English translation of Bleeker's autobiography (Bleeker, 1878, 1881) has now been published
by Lamme (1973). Like Day, Bleeker had many other interests besides ichthyology. He too wrote
on the medical topography of his station (Batavia), taught at the newly instituted medical college, and
wrote on cholera; also, he compiled an account of the Moluccas which, like Day's report on the Andamans,
or his book on Cochin (see pp.44 and 88 below), is remarkable for the diversity of topics that he felt
competent to write about.
6 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
history was undertaken in the last century. Bleeker was the more prolific of the
two (500 ichthyological works by Bleeker listed in Weber & De Beaufort, 1964 and
18 further papers listed by Lamme, 1972 ; 144 works by Day listed in Dean, 1916)
but their magna opera still provide, a centurj* later, an essential basis for modern
studies.
Day's huge fish collections, Uke those of Bleeker, found their way into a number
of museums and it is unfortunate that systematic workers have frequently assumed
that the 'types' in one museum were the only ones existing. In fact. Day's speci-
mens are now in at least twelve institutions. The largest of these Day collections
is that at the British Museum (Natural History), where over five thousand specimens
are deposited. Since Day wrote the Fishes of India in England on specimens that
he had brought home with him, and since he was a constant visitor to the British
Museum, one might suppose that this London collection is the most important of
all. Curiously enough. Day considered the British Museum to be among the minor
repositories of his types.
To understand the reason for this it has been necessary to probe the quarrel that
evolved between Day and Albert Gunther (1830-1914) of the British Museum, an
episode that deserves obUvion were it not for the light that it throws on the distri-
bution of Day's material. It was a quarrel whose origins must be partly guessed
at, but once begun it smouldered for over twenty years, flaring into almost open
warfare at times. It was within this climate that Day apportioned specimens from
his huge collection to the major museums of the time.
A Ust of Day's species and the registered numbers for specimens in eleven insti-
tutions are tabulated (p. 154), but without designation of lectotypes or preference
for any particular specimen(s) beyond an indication of those that were used for
figures in the Fishes of India. As with Bleekcr's specimens, confirmation of type
status requires individual investigation (Whiteheads/ a/., 1966 ; Talwar & Whitehead,
1971)-
Day occasionally based new species on drawings from the Tickell collection, a
reference that has often puzzled ichthyologists. We have given a brief description
of Col. Tickell's w^ork (p. 112). In dealing with Day's donations to the India
Museum in London, we have discussed also those of Cantor and of Sykes, whose
collections later came to the British Museum (pp. 121-122).
The biography of Day, for which the sources are in England, was written by the
senior author ; the distribution of Day's specimens and the Usting of Day's species
and possible type specimens was a co-operative effort, as is also the final form of
the text.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The stimulus to expand a brief biographical note into the sketch given here was
the discovery of manuscript and documentary material in the Cheltenliam Public
Library, which is most warmly thanked for the loan of these items ; especial gratitude
is due to Mrs N. B. Pringle for her valuable help in unearthing obituaries and other
useful data. For the second source of biographical information we are indebted
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 7
to Cmdr Reginald Egerton, R.N. (retired), grandson of Francis Day, and to his son
Reginald Ansell Day Egerton and Mrs Egerton, who were generous to a degree in
making available family documents, portraits, annotated books, letters and other
manuscripts. The third major source was the India Office Records, London, whose
bewildering array of official documents was patiently explained and often initially
searched by Mrs Sally Hofmann ; we are also indebted to Mr Ray Desmond for
locating Minute Papers and three Day letters relevant to the India Museum.
Many other aspects of this study were made possible by generous help in searching
old records or suggesting further sources and we would like to thank in particular
Mr R. S. Bird, Public Library and Museum, Tunbridge Wells (Day family records),
Mr J. P. Brooke-Little, Richmond Herald of Arms (Day coat-of-arms), Dr A. S.
Clare, Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh (no Day specimens of 1889), Mr E. M.
Dring, Bernard Ouaritch Ltd (unsold Fishes of Malabar), Mr R. Fish, Zoological
Society, London (Day's letters and drawings), Mrs W. Hill, Secretary of the
Ootacamund Club (trout trophy in Club), Miss Caroline Jakeman, Houghton Library,
Harvard (no Day letters), Dr K. Joysey, Zoological Museum, Cambridge (Day's
bird specimens). The Law Society, London (F. M. Day's career), Mr J. B. Lawson,
Shrewsbury School (records of Days), Mr R. Mackworth- Young, Librarian, Windsor
Castle (data on H. Fisher), Miss M. McDerby, Church Farm House Museum, Hendon
(Wm Day's mineral specimens), Mr J. E. Norris of the Railway Club, London (rail
fares in 1886), Dr S. T. Satyamurti, Director, Government Museum, Madras (no
Day letters), Mr J. F. Saunders, East Sussex County Library (Day family records),
Mr P. Wade, Royal Society of Medicine (Day's medical papers). Miss K. Wallace,
East Sussex Record Office (Day family records), and Messrs Winterbotham,
Gurney & Co., Solicitors, Cheltenham (tracing Day's descendants).
The task of listing potential type specimens of Day's species was immeasurably
aided by members of other institutions, often at what must have been considerable
sacrifice of their own valuable time. For copies of acquisition registers, extracts
of museum reports, photocopies of Day's letters and, in the case of the Vienna
collection, a listing of all Day specimens, we offer our most sincere thanks to Dr M.-L.
Bauchot (Paris), Dr M. Boeseman (Leiden), Dr P. Kahsbauer (Vienna), Dr C. Karrer
(Berlin), Professor G. S. Myers (Harvard), Dr G. Nelson (Chicago), Professor L.
Pardi and Dr Marta Poggesi (Florence), Dr J. Paxton (Sydney), Dr A. N. Svetovidov
(Leningrad), Dr E. Tortonese (Genoa) and Dr L. Woods (Chicago).
The junior author expresses his gratitude to Dr S. Khera of the Zoological Survey
of India for encouragement and facilities.
The biographical portion of this study frequently shows Albert Giinther in an
unfavourable light and we are, therefore, all the more grateful to his grandson,
Mr A. E. Gunther, for a most detailed and fair criticism of the text, from which
many corrections to facts and emphasis were made.
SOURCES
An outline of Day's career is given in the Dictionary of National Biography (Suppl.
2 : 122) and in his obituaries, especially those in Nature (18S9 : 282) and the
8 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Cheltenham Exatniner (17 July 1889) ; others listed by Dean (1916). Dates of
promotion and a note of Day's major publications are given by Crawford (1914, 1930)
and his regimental postings appear twice yearly in the East-India Register and
Army List (after 1861, Indian Army and Civit Service List) and in the Madras Army
List.
The early part of Day's career was in Madras Presidency and information on his
activities {Fishes of Malabar, trout experiment, etc.) is given in the Proceedings of
the Madras Goverfiment, Public Department and Revenue Department, of which many
relevant extracts are in the Cheltenham scrapbook Q 654 (see below). Later (from
about i86g) his affairs were reported in the Government of India, Proceedings of the
Public Works Department, Irrigation, of which some extracts, including fishery
reports, are in the Cheltenham scrapbook O 658.
A third printed source is the minutes, memoranda, etc., in the Government of
India, Proceedings of the Department of Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce [Fisheries
Section) (i.e. letters from India to the India Office - IOR.L/E/3/82-85, etc.). The
Proceedings contain, inter alia. Day's recommendations for fishery policy, his reports
on regional fisheries and the reactions of the authorities, correspondence relating to
his appointment as Inspector-General of Fisheries, the production of his Fishes of
India, and his release from other duties to work on fishes and to write the book. A
second part of these Proceedings, which appeared monthly, is headed Abstract
Tabular Statement [Part B) and here are listed briefly routine matters that did not
merit full publication. Among the latter are Day's requests for compassionate
leave. A parallel series of official documents is the Revenue Dispatches to India
(Original Drafts) (i.e. letters from the India Office to the Government of India -
IOR.L/E/3/479-49g, etc.). These Dispatches complement the Proceedings and
contain occasional references to Day, including some pertinent remarks on the cost
of producing the Fishes of India (see below, p. 52).
Albert Gunther plays a leading role in this story. His son, the historian of
science R. T. Gunther, published a calendar of his father's scientific works and a
short biography, as well as a list of his obituaries (Gunther, 1930). However, the
senior author was greatly privileged to read in typescript a biography of Albert
Gunther (and also of J. E. Gray) bj' his grandson A. E. Gunther (since pubHshed,
Gunther, 1975). The latter sorted and dispatched his grandfather's letters and
manuscripts to the British Museum (Natural History) in 1969 and these have been
of the greatest use in the present study.
The manuscript sources relating to Day's life and work are scattered and what
would prove of the greatest value. Day's probably large personal correspondence,
has not been found (if it still exists). One can only be grateful for what has sur-
vived, and especially those pieces of paper on which Day drafted his letters (and
expressed by a cancelled hue or sentence what prudence later forced him to omit).
All too often families, as well as libraries who should know better, destroy such
documents ; the present studj- shows how much of interest can be deciphered from
'worthless scraps'.
The following collections containing letters or other manuscript material have
been used.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 9
a. Cheltenham
After his death, Day's two unmarried daughters presented his natural history
library to the Cheltenham Public Library (see below). About twelve hundred
books were included, of which certain items comprise letters, manuscripts, proofs,
notebooks and annotated newspaper cuttings. The following 22 items, listed under
their Cheltenham library number, have biographical or bibliographical interest.
O 61. Buckland, F. T. 1863. Fish hatching. London, 268 pp. Copy presented
to Francis Day by Frank Buckland, with dedication (see p. 34) ; also, 2 sheets
inserted, notes by Day on trout egg collecting (see p. 34).
Q 139. Beavan, R. 1877. Handbook of the freshwater fishes of India. London,
247 pp. Letter pasted in, to Day from Brisbane Neill, 24 July 1S77 (see p. 100),
and many pencil annotations by Day.
O 236. Giinther, A. C. L. G. Catalogue of the fishes in the British Museum, 8 vols,
1859-70. Many annotations.
O481. Fishes of India - Sykes - M'Clelland. Bound volume of 2 reprints, Sykes,
1838, on the fishes of the Deccan and M'Clelland, 1838, on Indian cyprinid fishes ;
pencilled titles on flysheet and title page ; note on Sykes and an obituary from
The Overland Mail, 21 June 1872 ; some annotations, one long note (illegible) and
letter to Day from Achilles, 19 August (? July) 1877 (see p. 55) ; some figures
on a few of the Sykes plates coloured (? by Day).
Q 483. British fish - Couch, Young, Day, Gill 1822-85. Bound volume of reprints
containing a paper each by Couch, Young and Day ; also, 2 reviews by Gill of
Giinther's Introduction to the study of fishes (1880), the first a reprint from Forest
and Stream, the second from The Nation, followed by MS. of 6 pages entitled 'A
tew remarks upon Giinther's Introduction to the study of fishes by F Day' (see
p. 69).
Q 498. Hamilton-Buchanan, F. 1822. Fishes of the Ganges. A number of
annotations in pencil ; also, loose sheet at p. 282 concerning finrays in Cyprinus
bata and a pencil note at p. 308, repeated on inside of back cover, 'He considering
as two distinct rays what I call one divided to the root' (see p. 67).
Q 566. Bundle of loose newspaper cuttings on a variety of topics (some being on
pages torn from Q 650) and some letters.
602. Day, F. 1865. The fishes of Malabar. Proof copy, interleaved, with
many notes and corrections, but incomplete (pp. 39-110 missing, also p. 223 on-
wards, but with Index).
617. Gunther, A. C. L. G. & Playfair, L. 1867. The fishes of Zanzibar. A
number of annotations (see p. 76).
O 646. [missing] health of armies and medical geography. M. Boiidin. MS. by
Day, translation from the French ; flysheet 'Francis Day April loth 1858
Basingstoke Hants' ; title page 'Statistics of health & mortality of land and sea
armies . . . by J.-Ch. Boudin . . . 1846. Translated by Francis Day Madras Army',
100 fohos ; then, 'Essays on medical geography especially in the question of
pathological antagonism. By J.-Ch. Boudin . . . translated by Francis Day
Madras Army', 26 folios (ending in mid-sentence).
lo p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AXD P. K. TALWAR
O 647. Medical geology and Crimean War. MS. by Day, translation from the
French ; flysheet 'Francis Day April 20th 1S58 Basingstoke Hants' and 'Essaj's
on Medical Geolog>' ... by J.-Ch. M. Boudin . . . Translated by Francis Day
Madras Army', 55 folios, complete with Index.
Q 648. MS., Journal of natural history : being the result of my own observations, or
derived from living Testimony, vols 11 and 12, by Jonathan Couch, published in
Land and Water.
Q 649. MS., British stalk-eyed Crustacea, decapod Brachvura or short-tailed crabs
(very incomplete after first few pages).
Q 650. Fishes, 6 vols, originally notes on Malabar fishes, but with newspaper
cuttings often pasted in over the notes.
1. Fishes of CochinjBeingla catalogue of the/ Collection ofjAsst. Surgeon F. Day
F.L.S., F.Z.S. &c.jlate Civil Surgeon of Cochin & jMedical Officer to H.H. the
Rajah of CochinjCheltenham 1864. Descriptions of fishes, including measure-
ments, but many cuttings added later ; 75 species in Table of Contents.
2. Same title but now 'Civil Surgeon' (i.e. written after 14 December 1864). As
above ; 48 species in Table of Contents.
3. Xo title. Notes only ; 20 species listed.
4. No title. Cuttings (mostly salmonids) and notes (mostly cyprinids) ; no list
of species.
5. No title. Notes on Indian fishes, including clupeoids and eels ; no list of
species. Book reversed and begun again with the title 'Fish evolution by
Francis Day'. Notes on this and on Sea Fisheries of India.
6. No title. Notes, memoranda, book references, etc.
Q 651. A tour through some of the Indian fisheries. Proofs pasted into notebook.
Printed label inside cover 'Dr F. Day Care of Rev. F. Stockdale, Haven Street,
Ryde, Isle of Wight."
Q 652. Plates (40, but some duplicated) from Day's Fishes of Great Britain and
Ireland. On fly sheet 'Francis Day, Calcutta Aug* 19th 1871' (ink) and printed
label 'D' F. Day, Oakfield, Simla.'
O 653. Notes, letters and newspaper cuttings on British salmonids, 3 vols. In-
cludes 3 letters from James Youl (1865-66), other letters (Hadow, Maitland,
Thompson) and details of the cost and profit of his salmonid book.
654. Letters, Papers, and observations relative to/The Fishes of Malabar jThe Trout
Experiment & (The Introduction offish on the NeilgherriesjY. Day 1867./ England,
Neilgherries, Kurnool & Madras. Book containing letters and miscellaneous
notes, including a list of ichthyological books (? bought) and their prices in 1864-
65 (Bleeker's Atlas, 4 vols less one part, /15 : 8 : 6, Cuvier & Valenciennes, 12 vols,
£12 : 12 : o).
Q 655. Notes on British fishes and some letters (e.g. Vinciguerra in 18S1, J. W.
Clarke in 1883).
Q 656. Book of newspaper cuttings on salmon, trout and angling. On flysheet
'Francis Day Feb. 22nd 1885.'
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 11
O 65S. Notes, cuttings, letters on fisheries of India, including parts of the Pro-
ceedings of the Madras Government, Revenue Dept. for 1864-71. Label 'D'' F.
Day 98 Great Russell St. W.C
659. Notes for Day's account of the cholera epidemic at Kurnool, including a
number of letters, newspaper cuttings, etc.
b. Liunean Society, London
A number of Day's reprints and scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings were evidently
bound into volumes by Day at several times during his career and 13 volumes are
now in the Linnean Society's Library. Since these were not part of Day's library
given by his daughters to Cheltenham, it is possible that Day himself sent them to
the Linnean Society, although the final volume includes a paper of 1SS9.
These papers are of great interest because they contain marginal notes, inter-
leaved MS. descriptions, indications of Day's movements, and one important letter
(from Richard Bliss to Day in the second volume listed here). The newspaper
cuttings, chiefly on British fishes, may supplement those in the Cheltenham note-
books and are certainly more orderly.
LS. I. Fishes of India Blyth 1858-60 Day i86j-6g. Contains 7 reprints by
Edward Blyth (with MS. index of new species and genera), 12 reprints by Day
(with MS. index of species to year and page number), letter B. Boake to Volkard,
5 June 1867, on air-breathing fishes, and a newspaper cutting on Day's 'accidents'
in Burma. Printed label inside cover 'D' F. Day, 98, Great Russell Street, W.C
LS. 2. Fishes of India i8yo-y2 Day. Contains 19 reprints by Day and letter
Richard Bhss to Day, 22 July 1872, requesting types for Agassiz at Harvard and
commenting on Giinther's behaviour. Printed label inside cover 'D'' F. Day,
Oakfield, Simla.'
LS. 3. Fishes of India &c. 18J3-80 Day. Contains 29 reprints by Day and letter
B. Boake to Day, 28 July 1881.
LS. 4-6. Papers on fish 1876-84 [and 1882-87, i884-8g] Day. Contain 19, 12
and 4 reprints by Day.
LS. 7-13. Fishes of Great Britain 1879-81 [and 1881-83, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887,
1888] Day. Contain chiefly newspaper cuttings [Field, Land and Water, Fishing
Gazette, Cheltenham Examiner, etc.), including Day's publication of the Couch
journals (0 648), as well as some reprints by Day. Volumes 9 and 10 bound by
a Cheltenham firm.
Four further volumes of Day's reprints, bound differently, are in the same library ;
they contain no annotations and are papers evidently sent to the Society and bound
up subsequently.
c. British Museutn {Natural History), London
Documents and letters have not yet been brought together as a single collection,
some being held by the Departments and others by the General Library. The
following have been used.
12 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAK
1. Letter Books in Zoological Department (bound, arranged by year, alphabetical),
containing 174 letters from Day to Giinther (or one to Flower) from 1865 to
1889.
2. Giinther collection of letters in General Library, in boxes arranged by subject.
There are 38 letters relating to Day in Box 15 and other relevant material was
found in Box 2 (Giinther-Murie), Box 16 (Giinther-Peters and Giinther-Sclater),
Box 3 (Giinther's official diary) and Box 24 (Gunther's book on British fishes).
3. Reports & Minutes (variously titled) in Zoology Department Library, seven
bound volumes (not numbered), from 1828 to 1874, dealing with administrative
matters (indexed). O'Shaughnessy affair in 6th and 7th volumes.
4. Official Documents, continuation of the above from 1875 to 1906 (20 bound volumes,
indexed) and 1909 to 1921 (18 boxes, loose). From 1896 to 1919 there is a second
series, Official Documents, Vertehrata, 4 bound volumes.
5. Miscellaneous Departmental Documents, part of the above two in subject matter,
2 volumes (bound and indexed), 1857 to 18S9 and 1888 to 1895.
6. India Museum documents in Zoological Department Library, 4 bound volumes
deaUng with zoological specimens (see below, p. 118).
7. Two notebooks in Fish Section library, covering the period 22 December 1S64
to 19 July 1870 and October 1872 to 28 March 1883, give lists of specimens from
the Spirit Room required by visitors, sometimes written out by the visitor him-
self (Day on 17 June and 19 July 1870 ; possibly also 18 May and two days the
following week).
d. Zoological Society, London
A single letter from Day (Madras, 28 July 1867) in the general collection and
another (Day to F. Moore, 2 January 1865) in the Gladstone Collection of Auto-
graphs. Four volumes of fish drawings (see p. 109). There are 14 letters from
Giinther, none relevant to our study. In 1889 Day presented 6 bound volumes of
reprints and cuttings, including many of his medical papers :
1. Day's papers -vol. i Medicine - 1854-78. On flysheet in ink 'Francis Day
Cochin July 1861' and in pencil (? by Day) 'These papers are reprints from the
Indian Annals'. Thirteen medical papers : 1856-60 - Indian Annals of Medical
Science, 1860-68 - Madras Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, ? i8y8 - Chelten-
ham Natural Science Society. All are separately re-paged.
2. Day's papers - vol. 2 Salmonidae - i8j8-88. Carefully pasted salmonid cuttings
{Land and Water).
3. Day's papers - vol. 3 Fishes - 1881-88. Many cuttings or proofs from The Field.
4. Day's papers - vol. 4 Fishes - 1881-88. More cuttings, including those dcahng
with the Couch journals.
5. Day's papers - vol. 5 Fishes - 1865-71. Reprints, including those on the Cochin
fishes and the report on pisciculture in the Nilgiris.
6. Day's papers - vol. 6 Fishes - 1871-88. Reprints, including many later papers
on British fishes.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 13
e. Zoologisches Museum, Berlin
A collection of 45 letters (1872-87) from Day to Wilhelm Peters (3 to Eduard
von Martens, a few to Franz Hilgendorf), 2 letters from Arthur O'Shaughnessy to
Peters, and a number of letters from Giinther to Peters ; photocopies of the Day
and O'Shaughnessy letters now in the British Museum (Natural History).
f. Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden
One letter from Day to Hermann Schlegel and two to Ambrosius Hubrecht, all of
1879. Recently, some of Pieter Bleeker's correspondence has been found in the
archives of the museum, including a number of letters from Giinther, 13 letters
from Day (1865 and 1875-77), an important letter from Brisbane Neill to Bleeker
(see p. 32 below), and a letter from G. E. Dobson that mentions Day (9 June 1875).
g. University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge
A letter from Day to Alfred Newton and one probably to J. W. Clarke, both of
November 1888, in the letterbook headed Museum of Zoology History of the Collection
Vol. II 1871-1891.
h. Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna
Only 4 letters from Day have been found, all addressed to Franz Steindachner
(1S77, except one undated).
i. Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris
A letter from Day to Leon Vaillant of i March 1875.
j. Somerset House, London
A copy of Day's Will is filed in Vol. 14 for 1889 ; it was drawn up on 19 February
1889 and Probate was granted on 2 August of that year.
Records of births, marriages and deaths have also been consulted. Formerly in
Somerset House, these are now at the General Register Office, St Catherine's House,
London.
k. Egerton family
A number of items of scientific and biographical interest are in the possession of
the Egerton family (possibly including legacies mentioned in the Will of Fanny
Laura, Day's eldest daughter). The following are of special interest.
1. MS. journal, bound, written by Emma, Day's first wife, between 18 July and
23 August at Ootacamund (see below, p. 91).
2. Small notebook, written by Reginald Francis Egerton, Day's grandson, including
synopsis of letter about the Day family home, Hadlow House, from Mabel
Beaumont, daughter of Day's sister Mary.
3. 'Research report in the matter of Dr Francis Day - ref . 16/116 compiled by
W & A Mussett Lincoln's Inn Heraldic Studios', 32 pp. MS. compilation of
biographical data on Day and the Day family (written about 1921).
14 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
4. Two family trees, one taken from the other but with new information added,
tracing the Days back to about 1600.
5. Notebook containing obituaries of Day, including portrait published in The
Graphic and a letter to Day from Sir James Maitland ; also, newspaper cuttings,
letters and portrait of John Campbell Egerton, Day's son-in-law.
6. Letter, Alice Catharine Day Anderson (Day's sister) to Reginald Francis
Egerton, 20 June 1928, concerning her Will.
7. Letter, 'Aunt H. Covey' to Edith Mary (Day's youngest daughter), 30 June
1902, concerning family health.
S. Two receipts, 26 February and 18 March 1889, from Zoological Society for 88
and 146 drawings of fishes sent by Day.
9. Three photographs and a portrait of Day (see below, p. 20).
10. Three sil\-er medals (Societe d'Acclimatation, 1872 ; National Fisheries Exhibi-
tion, 1881 ; International Fisheries Exhibition, Edinburgh, 1882).
11. Day, F. 1873. Report on the sea-fish atid fisheries of India and Burma, Calcutta,
332 pp. Two copies, one interleaved and used for compiUng the text and plates
for the Fishes of India (see below, p. 48) ; also, notes on flysheet and following
page refer to Ford (see below, p. 54), Giinther (see p. 103), Bleeker (see p. 112).
and Jerdon (see p. 49).
12. Day, F. 1875-78. The fishes of India, London, 2 vols. Two copies, one
interleaved with plain pages and plates, bound in four volumes, annotated and
used for preparation of projected 2nd edition (see below, p. 58).
13. Day, F. 1873. Report on the freshwater fish and fisheries of India and Burma,
Calcutta, 307 pp.
14. 'Day on fishes.' Ten of Day's reprints, 1865-67, including Fishes of Cochin,
bound with 23 figures (13 coloured by Day - see below, p. iii), some annota-
tions, also MS. list headed 'Lepidoptera collected in the Neilgherries by F. Day
Esq.' giving 81 species and signed 'F. Moore London July 1868' and a second
list headed 'New species from March 1867' giving 46 fish species, each with a
page number (between 284 and 940) ; also, newspaper cuttings concerning
Day's fishery reports.
15. 'Miscellaneous papers Francis Day.' Set of 59 reprints, Proc. zool. Soc, Linn.
Soc. Lond., Ann. Mag. nat. Hist., Asiatic Soc. Bengal, final paper Proc. Cotteswold
Club (1889), also medical paper ; no annotations.
16. Loose reprints (10 by Day), including Day, A. C. 1892. The Diocesan 'Water-
baby' or shall the 'Evangeline' be given up ? (Missionary tract by Day's sister
Alice - see Appendix, p. 163).
17. 'Miscellaneous papers -F. Day.' Set of 5 reprints, 1868-86, including one on
the races of Malabar (Chelt. nat. Set. Soc, 1886) ; no annotations.
18. 'Tropical fevers by Francis Day, FLS.' Second copy of proof, much corrected
and altered, of one of his medical papers (see below, p. 87) ; in ink on final
page 'Finished Copying July 25th 1861.'
19. Day, F. 1883. Fish culture, from International Fisheries Exhibition, London,
105 pp. Interleaved, with newspaper cuttings from Land and Water, 18S3-84.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 15
20. Day, F. 1884. The commercial sea fishes of Great Britain. London, 328 pp.
Prize essay for International Fisheries Exhibition, 1883.
21. Day, F. 1865. The fishes of Malabar, London. Two copies, both with
coloured plates, identical bindings (spine leather, tooled, with small design of
fish in gold repeated five times) ; receipt in one copy '1876 Dr F Day
April 27 To J Revell
Binding Book - los : od'
22. Day, F. 1887. British and Irish Salmonidae, London. Contains letter J.
Broughton to Day, 2 May 1868, on gelatin content of swimbladder of Otolithus
ruber.
23. Day, F. 1863. The Land of the Permauls. Title page inscribed 'Emma Day
Cochin June 14th 1863'.
24. Day, F. 1889. The Fauna of British India, Fishes, 2 vols.
25. Herbert, D. (ed.). 1883. Fish and fisheries. A selection from the prize essays
of the International Fisheries Exhibition, Edinburgh, 1882, Edinburgh, 352 pp.
26. CheUus, J. M. 1847. A system of surgery (Enghsh translation by J. F. South),
London, 2 vols. Front cover stamped in gold 'St George's Hospital Medical
School Mr Francis Day CUnical Surgery Prize Session 1850- 1 Presented
by Sir Benj" C. Brodie Bart.' (part of Day collection originally but evidently
sold ; discovered in bookshop in ig66).
27. AmtUche Berichte iiber die Internationale Fischerei-Ausstelliing zu Berlin, 1880.
Elaborate binding, in ink (by Day) on title page 'Francis Day from Professor
Peters'.
28. Day, W. A. 1867. The Russian Government in Poland with a narrative of the
Polish insurrection of i86j. London, 333 pp. On fiysheet 'Alice Catharine
Day From her affectionate Brother WilUam Ansell Day loth December
1866'.
29. Five books on India, evidently bought by Day in the period 1860-63 while in
Cochin (signatures on all but one).
1. India Office Records, London
Three letters from Day have been found among the Minute Papers in the series
Statistics & Commerce, Home Correspondence (L/E/2/80 and 83, both volumes dealing
with 1879) ; the letters are attached to Minutes No. 4817 and No. 5258 and deal
with specimens sent to the India Museum (see p. 120) ; information on this museum
is scattered through the volumes of this series, and L/E/2/52 is especially important
for details of the transfer of the museum to South Kensington (see p. 118).
We have failed to find any letters from Day in India in spite of personal searches
in the libraries of the Zoological Survey of India, the Asiatic Society of Bengal and
the Indian Museum, all in Calcutta. However, the manuscripts of the Asiatic
Society form an enormous collection and much interesting material will probably
come to light when properly sorted and catalogued. The Government Museum,
i6
P. J. I'. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Madras, was also unable to find any letters relating to Day or any specimens pre-
sented b}' him. Thus, for the twenty 3-ears that Day spent in India we have been
forced to rely on official documents or letters preserved by museums or libraries in
Europe.
A bbreviations
For convenience, the following abbreviations have been used when citing manu-
script, anonj^mous or documentary material.
ASB.Proc. Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, manuscript records of general
or Council matters, election of new members, etc.
Official Documents, Zoolog>- Department, British Museum (Natural History),
bound and numbered volumes, 1875 onwards (see above, p. 12).
Two notebooks in Fish Section, Zoolog>- Department, British Museum
(Natural History), which list specimens in Spirit Room requested by visitors,
1864-83 (incomplete ; also letter Gray to Giinther - see p. 72).
Giinther Collection of letters, etc.. General Library, British Museum (Natural
History), Bo.x 2 (letters M-R), Box 3 (Giinther's diar>-). Box 15 (Day),
Box 16 (Peters and Sclater), Box 24 (British fishes).
Miscellaneous Departmental Documents, Zoolog\' Department, British
Museum (Natural Historj'), two bound volumes, 1857-95 (see above, p. 12).
Reports & Minutes, Zoology Department, British Museum (Natural Historj-),
seven volumes bound but not numbered, 1828-74 (^^^ above, p. 12).
Letter Books, Zoology Department, British Museum (Natural History),
volumes bound by year, alphabetical ; also Documents of the India Museum
(see p. 12).
The Cheltenham Examiner, newspaper, 17 July 1889 (Day's obituarj-) and
and 8 January 1890 (gift of Day's hbrary).
Cheltenham Free Press, newspaper, 13 July 1889 (Day's obituar>').
Dictionary of National Biography, Supp. 2 : 122 (1903), wTitten by B. B.
Woodward .
Books, reprints, manuscripts, etc. in the possession of the Egerton family
(hsted, p. 13).
East India Register and Army List (after 1861, L\CSL.), with index, two
parts per year.
Ecclesiastical Returns, lOR. N/2/42,48,50 (1862,7,9) (baptisms and burials
in Madras Presidency).
Fishes of Malabar (proof copy, Q 602).
Family Register of the Madras Medical Fund, lOR. L/AG/23/9/3 (marriage
of Edith Day, etc.) (not available for consultation).
Government of India, Proceedings of the Department of Agriculture, Revenue
and Commerce (Fisheries Section), lOR. L/E/3/82-85, etc. (letters from
India to the India Office). Also, Abstract Tabular Statement (Part B).
Government of India, Proceedings of the Public Works Department, Irrigation
(relevant parts and Day's fishery reports in Q 658).
General Register Office, St Catherine's House, London (births, marriages
and deaths).
Hampshire County Library.
Indian Army Civil Service List (before 1861, EIRA.), with index.
India Office Records (and Library), London.
Leave Pay Records, lOR. L/AG/20/6/22, also 32, 33 (Day's periods of leave).
BMNH.MS.Doc.
BMNH.MS.F.
BMNH.MS.G.
BMNH.MS.Misc.
BMNH.MS.Rep.
BMNH.MS.Z.
CE.
CFP.
DNB.
Eg. 1-29
EIRA.
ER.
FM.
FRMMF.
GI.DARC.Proc.
GI.PWD.Proc.
GRO.
HCL.
lACSL.
lOR.
LPR.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889)
17
LS. 1-13
LSRSD.
MAL.
MB.
MGPD.Proc.
MGRD.Proc.
MMFPPB.
MNHN.MS.
NMV.MS.
Q 61-659
RDI.
RJINH.MS.
SCHC.
SH.
TIF.
W.FD.
W.FLD.
ZMB.MS.
ZMC.MS.
ZSL. 1-6
Linnean Society, London, 13 volumes of Day's reprints, cuttings, etc. ;
also proposal form.
The Law Society, London, Records and Statistical Department.
Madras Army List, witli index, four parts per year.
Madras Burials, lOR. Z/N/2/D7.
Proceedings of the Madras Government, Public Department (relevant cuttings
in Q O54, Q 658), lOR.
Proceedings of the Madras Government, Revenue Department, lOR.
Madras Medical Fund Pension Pay Books, lOR. hjAGIiglzqlb etc. (pension
to Day's daughters, marriage, death).
Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris (letter from Day to Leon
Vaillant).
Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna (letters from Day).
Cheltenham Public Library, Cheltenham (Day manuscripts, etc.).
Revenue Dispatches to India {Original Drafts), lOR. L/E/3/479-499, etc.
(letters, etc., from the India Office to the Government of India -see GI.
DARC.Proc. above).
Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden (letters from Day).
Statistics &■ Commerce, Home Correspondence, lOR. L/E/2/50, also 52, 56,
80 and 83, containing Minute Papers 113-250, also 251-400, 900-1061,
4801-4950, and 5251-5352 for the years 1874-76 and 1879.
Somerset House, London (Wills).
Day's A tour through the fisheries of India, published in 19 parts in 1870-
Land and Water, 10 : 55, 63, 79, iii, 149, 167, 183, 200, 218, 237, 254, 274,
290, 308, 327, 348, 367, 388, 408 (letters from Buckland (p. 5), Col. Haly
(p. 203) and Fair Play (p. 310) ; the journal edited by Frank Buckland).
Francis Day's Will - copy at Somerset House.
Fanny Laura Charlotte Day's Will - Winterbotham, Gumey, solicitors,
Cheltenham.
Zoologisches Museum, Berlin (letters from Day, also Giinther and O'Shaugh-
nessy) .
University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge.
Zoological Society of London, library (Day letters, reprints, etc.).
l8 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AXD P. K. TALWAR
Principal events in the life of Francis Day
1S29 Born (2 Mar.), Maresfield, Sussex
1838-43 Educated at Shrewsbury School
1849 Enrolled at St George's Hospital, London ; death of father
1851 MRCS
1852 To India ; Asst. Surgeon, Jladras Establ. ; 2nd Burmese War
1853-56 Attached to various regiments ; at Mercara (Jan. 1S55), Bangalore (May
1855) and Hyderabad (1856) ; death of brother Edmund (1853) ; pub-
lished on tropical fevers (1856)
1857 To England (12 months' sick leave from Feb.) ; lived at Hampstead,
London ; elected to Linnean Society ; married Emma Covey (Nov.)
1858-63 To India (Hyderabad, arrived Jun. 1858) ; further medical papers (1858-
61) ; Civil Surgeon at Cochin (1859) ; death of brother Charles (i860) ;
death of father-in-law (Aug. 1861) ; birth of daughter Fanny Laura
(Nov. 1861) ; studied and drew Cochin fishes ; survey of Nilgiri Hills
(May 1863) ; published Land of the Permauls (1863, ? Jun.)
1864 To England (12 months' sick leave from Feb.) ; lived at East Sheen,
London ; birth of son Francis Meredith (Apr.) ; moved to Cheltenham
(Oct.) ; extension of sick leave (effectively for 12 months)
1865 Fishes of Cochin presented at Zoological Society meetings (Jan., Mar.) ;
disputes with Giinther over Catopra (Jan., Feb.) ; moved to Isle of Wight
(Oct.) ; Fishes of Malabar published (? Dec.)
1866 Collected trout eggs for Nilgiris with Buckland (Jan.)
To India (Feb. ; Ootacamund in Mar.) ; trout experiment failed (Apr.)
and fish stocking experiment begun (May) ; appointed Medical Store
Keeper, Madras (May, not taken up) ; moved to Kurnool (Aug.) ; moved
to Madras (Nov.)
1867 Appointed Professor of Materia Medica (May) ; privilege leave (Jul.,
Aug. - to Ootacamund) ; published on cholera, also on trout and stocking
experiments ; birth of daughter Edith Mary (Oct.)
1868 Fishery surveys to south (Jun.) and to north (Sept.) of Madras and in
Orissa (Dec, Jan.) ; papers on Nilgiri experiments and catalogue of
Indian freshwater fishes ; criticisms by Giinther in Zoological Record ;
specimens sent to British Museum
1869 On 'special duty' to inspect fisheries (Mar.) ; to Calcutta, elected Fellow
of Royal Asiatic Society (Apr.) ; fishery survey of Burma (May-Sept.) ;
death of his wife Emma ; fishery survey of Andaman Islands (Dec, Jan.) ;
papers on new fishes, fishery reports ; strong criticisms by Giinther in
Zoological Record ; large work on Indian fishes planned
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 19
Principal events in the life of Francis Day (Cont.)
1870 To England (lo months' sick leave from Mar.) ; visited Giinther at
Britisli Museum
To India (Sept., recalled 5 months early)
1871 Appointed Inspector-General of Fisheries (Jul.) ; fishery surveys in
northern India (Ganges, Jumna, Indus tributaries, Sind, Beluchistan) ;
papers on new fishes and report on freshwater fish and fisheries ; dispute
with Giinther in Proceedings of Zoological Society ; lived at Calcutta,
also perhaps Simla ; promoted Surgeon-Major (Dec.)
1872 To England (3 months' leave, Mar.-May) ; married Emily Sheepshanks
(Apr.) ; silver medal, Societe d'Acclimatation
To India (May) ; lived at Simla, also perhaps Calcutta ; further surveys
and papers, including account of marine fish and fisheries of India
'^^73 Death of his second wife Emily ; application for 2 j'ears' leave to write
Fishes of India (Oct.)
1874 To England (May) ; lived at Richmond, I^ondon ; frequent visits to
British Museum ; complaints to Owen about Giinther (Aug.) ; Ford to
illustrate Fishes of India (Nov.) ; Peters' complaints about Gunther
(Dec.)
1875 Visits to Berlin, Paris (Jan., Feb.) and The Hague, Leiden, BerUn and
Paris (May, Jun.) ; Fishes of India, pt i published (Aug.) ; offers type
collection to British Museum (refused)
1876 Moved to Cheltenham (Feb.) ; t^'pe collection bought by Indian Museum ;
6 months' extension of leave (Ma}') ; death of Ford (July) ; Fishes of
India, pt 2 published (Aug.) ; retired (Nov.)
1877-80 Fishes of India, pt 3 published (Aug. 1877) and pt 4 (Dec. 1878) ; quarrel
with Gunther over Mintern (Aug. 1880) ; Fishes of Great Britain, pt I
pubhshed (1880) ; death of Buckland (Dec. 1880)
1881-85 Fishes of Great Britain, pts 2-4 published (1881-84) '■ Great International
Fisheries Exhibition, London (1883) ; No. 2 fish collection to Sydney ;
CIE (1885)
1886-88 Death of brother WilUam (1886) ; British and Irish Salmonidae published
(1887) ; Supplement to Fishes of India published (Oct. 1888) ; Hon. Ll.D.
Edinburgh (1888) ; part of fish collection to British Museum (1888,
? Dec.) and Indian bird skins to Cambridge
1889 Drawings of fishes to Zoological Society (Feb., Mar.) ; fishes and crus-
taceans to British Museum ; proofs of Fauna of India - Fishes part
corrected ; died (10 Jul.) at Cheltenham.
20 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
As yet, there is no full biography of Francis Day. The sources cited here are
inadequate, being almost wholly concerned with his military career and ichthyo-
logical work and affording only tantalizing glimpses of his other activities. The
documents available are sometimes neatly arranged, as for example the letters in
London and Berlin, but more often information has had to be painstakingly de-
ciphered from disordered scraps, notes and undated drafts in which Day's usually
legible hand has trailed away into a miserable scrawl. Nevertheless, even a bio-
graphical sketch has seemed worthwhile, concentrating on the period leading up to
the pubHcation of the Fishes of India ; his work on British fishes has been largely
omitted, although fuU of interest.
In the hope that a more complete biography of Day will eventually be written,
we have tried (at the risk of disrupting the text) to facihtate retrieval of the present
scattered data by giving a source for all statements made (abbreviations, p. i6),
although this wdll not eliminate tedious searches through some of the Cheltenham
material, where manuscripts are unnumbered and sometimes merely thrust between
unpaged leaves of scrapbooks, rarely in chronological order.
Five portraits of Day have come to light, all in the possession of the Egerton family
(descendants of Day's daughter Edith Mary). The first is a photograph from the
Royal Photographic Studio of Mr Jabez Hughes of Ryde (Isle of Wight) and thus
taken between October 1865 and February 1866 (PI. i left). It shows at all and
rather lean man in dress uniform, the eyes deep-set, eyebrows strong (slightly re-
touched), forehead high, hps full and serious, the upper with a moustache, nose fine
and a little pointed, with long nostrils, chin round and firm. The second portrait,
an engraving reproduced from The Graphic (undated obituary, Eg. 5), is stated to
be taken from a photograph by Messrs MauU cS: Fo.x of 187A Piccadilly and shows
Day in his late forties (PI. I right). Two further photographs (PI. 2) were taken in
Cheltenham by Dighton's Art Studio (Weston Villa, opposite the BeUevue), ap-
parently then run by Ernest E. White, and they show Day towards the end of his
life, the hair grey or white but little thinned, the jaw and cheeks now heavy. Finally,
there is a portrait in oils possibly the one mentioned in the Will of Day's daughter
Fanny Laura. It is signed J. C. Egerton 1893 and was thus painted by Day's son-
in-law after Day's death, probably from a photograph. It shows Day in perhaps
his late forties wearing the dress uniform of the Medical Service (scarlet tunic, gold
epaulettes, etc. ; see Crawford, 1914 : 250 for description).
Early years i82g-5i
The Dictionary of National Biography, usually a reliable guide, states that Francis
Day was 'the third son of William Day of Hadlow House, Maresfield, Sussex, by his
wife Ann Le Blanc and he was born there on 2 March 1829'. In fact, this is not
strictly accurate. Hadlow House was in Mayfield Parish (now Hadlow Down Parish)
and the family apparently did not move to Hadlow House from Maresfield until
after 1833, when Francis Day was four or five years old. His mother is elsewliere
given as Ann EUiott (e.g. by Venn, 1944-54), but we have not been able to settle
this point (see Appendix for further sources and details of the famUy).
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 21
The Days were a land-owning Sussex family. According to Francis Day's sister
Alice, the family estate at the time of his boyhood comprised some two thousand
acres around Maresfield (Maresfield, Hadlow Down, Rotherfield and Framfield),
with about forty tenant farmers (Day, A., 1928). Hadlow House itself, now spht
into four separate dwellings, is a large and fairly imposing building that suggests
that the Days were probably among the more prosperous members of the Sussex
squirarchy. However, Francis Day's grandfather, William Day, was not a farmer
but after some years in a draper's business in London turned his energies to painting
and the study of rocks and minerals (Egerton, 1970). Day's father was also a keen
amateur geologist (Day, A., 1928) but, at least from the time that he inherited
Hadlow House, was a full-time farmer.
Day had two older brothers, Wilham Ansell (b. 1826) and Edmund (b. 1828),
two younger brothers, Henry George (b. 1830) and Charles Thomas (b. 1833), and
two younger sisters, Mary Ann (b. 1841) and Alice Catharine (b. 1849) ; in addition,
there were two older half-sisters, Caroline (b. ? 1821) and Eleanor (b. 1823) from his
father's first marriage. None took up farming, but the interest in geology continued,
Edmund studying as a mining engineer and Henry apparently helping Adam Sedge-
wick in the arrangement of the geological museum in Cambridge (Day, A., 1928).
Thus, an interest in at least one branch of the natural sciences was very clearly
established in the family.
Day was sent to Shrewsbury, where his brothers William and Henry were also
educated, and there his first leaning to natural history 'shewed itself in boyish
observations on the habits of iish, and in some of his papers, in later hfe, reference
is made to them. When home for his hoUdays much of his time was devoted to
the study of birds and animals on his father's estate' (17 July 1889, CE.).
In September 1848 Day was enrolled at St George's Hospital in London to begin
a medical career (Burgess, 1967 : 48). It is difficult to say whether this stemmed
from a real desire to study medicine, or whether it was a second choice in view of the
lack of professional opportunities in natural history. Certainly, Day showed con-
siderable interest in medical problems in the early part of his career (1855 to about
1862 - see p. 87 below) and in his investigation of the Kurnool cholera outbreak
(see p. 40), but this may only have reflected his general sense of curiosity. He
did, however, show promise in his medical studies and in his final year won the
clinical surgery prize and was presented with a handsome leather-bound copy
of J. M. Chelius's A system of surgery (English translation of 1847, 2 volumes -
Eg. 26).
India 1832-64
After quaUfying at St George's Hospital (MRCS in 1851), Day probably spent
some months at home before being appointed to the Madras EstabUshment as
Assistant Surgeon (26 February 1852 - EIRA.). Shortly after, he sailed for India
in time to take part in the Second Burmese War (relief of Pegu, medal). His choice
of mihtary service may have stemmed from a desire to travel. It is possibty no
more than a coincidence that the founder of Fort St George, later to be Madras, was
a seventeenth-century namesake, Francis Day. However, there appears to be no
22 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
e\'idence connecting the two, ev'en though Day's family can be traced back to the
early i6oos (Eg. 3, 4).
Apart from brief entries in the Army List (EIRA.), there is very Httle that can be
gleaned of this eariy part of Day's career and in particular of the birth of his interest
in Indian fishes. In 1853 and 1S54 he was with the ist European Regiment of
Fusihers (Chve's old regiment), and from June of the latter year with the 3rd
European Regiment. In January of the following year he went to the 27th Regiment
of Native Infantr\r, stationed at Mercara, and in May to the 12th at Bangalore ; in
1856 he was with the 3rd Regiment once more and his station was Hyderabad, but
early in 1857 he was granted sick leave, during which he married (see below, p. 86).
On 16 June 1857 Day was proposed for Fellowship of the Linnean Society, his
address at that time being 7 Harrington Street North, Hampstead Road, London.
He was recommended as '. . . a gentleman much attached to the study of natural
history [a standard form of recommendation], especially Zoologj' ; having paid
much attention to the Birds of India, of which he possesses much knowledge' (LS.,
proposal form). Those who signed the form were Thomas Horsfield (first Curator
of the East India Company's Museum in London, from 1820 to 1S59), John S.
Gaskoin, John Forster and Robert Wright, as well as Richard Owen and J. E. Gray
from the British Museum. A final name, George Pollock, was pencilled on the form
but never signed ; Pollock was then Assistant Surgeon at St George's Hospital and
had been a fellow student (Burgess, 1967 : 48). The form shows two interesting
facts. First, Day was at that time known as an ornithologist, not an ichthyologist ;
and second, that he was apparently personally known to both Richard Owen (1804-
92) and John Edward Gray (1800-75) and had presumably visited the British
Museum. Owen had been appointed Superintendent of the natural history Depart-
ments (Zoology-, Botany, Mineralogy and Geology, the last two combined until
1857) and Gray was Keeper of Zoology. Albert Giinther did not become a perma-
nent member of the staff (Senior Assistant) until July 1862, although he began his
work on arranging and cataloguing the reptile and amphibian collections in 1857
and passed on to the fish collections in 1858. Day is not listed as a donor of bird
specimens to the British Museum (Sharpe, 1906), but he gave three collections to
the museum at East India House in Leadenhall Street (from 1858, Museum of the
India Office). These collections comprised 188 bird specimens, presented on 25 May
1857, 8 January 1858 and March 1858, the first batch being from Burma, the Nilgiris
and Mysore (BMNH.MS.Z., Documents of the India Museum, 1 : 220). The dates
suggest that Day was in England for a year's leave, and the locahties show that he
was interested in ornithology even in the earliest period of his Indian service, i.e.
during 1852 in Burma.
Officially, Day is said to have returned to India (by the overland route) in March
1858 (LPR.), but two notebooks in Cheltenham (0 646, 647) are inscribed 'Francis
Day April loth [also 20th] 1858 Basingstoke Hants.' The Lancet (Anon., 1858),
after reporting Day's election to the Linnean Society, added 'The same gentleman
has also been appointed by the Hon. East India Company to the medical charge of
their depot for European troops stationed at Warley' and in his articles in this
journal (see p. 86) Day gave his official address as 'H.E.I.C. Depot, Warley' until
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 23
the issue of 3 April ; in the issue of 24 April his address was '3rd Infantry, Hyderabad
Contingent'. Warley, near Brentwood on the outskirts of London, was the Com-
pany's training depot and since Day's Lancet articles were a summary of his work
on tropical fevers, it seems likely that he was invited to lecture on this subject.
In 1858, Day returned to an India very different from the one that he had left.
Eight weeks after his departure on home leave the Mutiny had broken out at Meerut
and although military hostilities drew to a close shortly after his return, he came
back to a European community still appalled by the massacre at Cawnpore and
charged with a resentment, suspicion and often naked hatred that was to mould
attitudes for many years to come. An equally important aspect of this aftermath,
and one that played a significant part in Day's subsequent activities, was the trans-
fer of power from the East India Company to the Crown in August 1858. Hitherto
the administration had been shared between the President of the Board of Control
for the East India Company (in England) and the Governor-General (in India) ;
the Court of Directors of the Company acted as little more than an advisory council,
even their old powers of patronage having been eroded by the Charter Act of 1853.
In the reorganization following the Mutiny, the President was replaced by a Secretary
of State (with his technical advisers in what was now the India Office in London)
who came increasingly to exercise control over the Governor-General and thus over
the political and financial activities of the Government of India (Thompson &
Garratt, 1935 : 465). For Francis Day, whose early career was a constant battle
for official sanction of his fishery schemes, the new chain of responsibihties, as well
as the people concerned, were of considerable interest. On the whole, the new
organization was to be more sympathetic than might have been the case during the
Company's rule ; as Day noted wryly in the Fishes of Malabar, 'the first, if not the
last, direct assistance which the Court of Directors . . . gave to Ichthyology' was the
pubhcation in 1803 of Russell's Fishes of Coromandel. Ahead of Day, however,
was more than a decade of partial victories before he achieved his goal.
From Hyderabad, Day was moved in 1859 to Cochin, where he remained until
early in 1864 and where his first tangible steps in ichthyology were made. Here
he collected fishes, compiled descriptions of them in the notebooks now at Cheltenham
(Q 650), drew them (from at least June 1863, see p. in), and made a survey of the
streams of the Nilgiri Hills in May 1863 with a view to the introduction of trout
(Day, 1868a). In addition, he studied the fish and fisheries of the area and included
descriptions of these in his book The Land of the Permaids, or Cochin its past and
present (Day, 1863 : 487-493).
Leave 1864-66
In 1864 Day returned to England on leave (departed ? 8 February - LPR. ; in
Aden by February - Day, 1865a : 17 ; on 12 months' sick leave - 658, LPR.). His
specimens and notebooks had been sent on separately, and when these arrived he
wrote up his first ichthyological paper. The fishes of Cochin, in which he listed 211
species, the paper being published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of
London (read in two sessions, 10 January and 14 March 1865). Day had been
elected Fellow of the Zoological Society probably shortly after his return to England.
24 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Unfortunately, the Zoological Society does not have a record of the date of Day's
election, nor of his sponsors, and only two of Day's letters have been preserved
there. During this period he lived at Elm Lodge, East Sheen (London). He may
have written to the British Museum, if not personally to Albert Gunther, the previous
j^ear and one would have expected him to have called in to meet Gunther. * He
certainty sent specimens to the British Museum, delivered to Gunther by Day's
friend Andrew Brisbane NeUl {1814-91), formerly of the Madras Medical Service,
who wTote : 'I have just come from the Brit. Mus. where I have seen Dr. Gunther
and delivered your specimens to him. The so-called (as Lord Russell would say)
Master confirms [? considers] maculatus has spines on the preoperculum and there-
fore is not a N . maculatus but is a new species which 3'ou can name . . . Gunther is
clearly of the opinion that the specimen 7 inches long should be presented to the
B.M.' (Neill to Day, 4 January 1865, Q 654).
The first extant letter from Day to Giinther, written in January 1865, begins
with the more familiar 'My Dear Dr. Gunther' and asks for help and ad\'ice. 'As
you kindly promised to run your eye over my ichthyological papers, I take the Uberty
of writing to you on some points connected with siltiroids, before I send the com-
munication to the Zoological Society, because some of my observations appear to
differ from yours, as well as in some points I should like you kindly to give me your
opinion' (22 January 1865, BMNH.MS.Z.). On the face of it, this is typical of the
many requests for help that Gunther received from other ichthyologists, but as
will be shown below, it must be seen within the context of the quarrel that had
already developed between the two men. In the Ught of the correspondence pre-
ceding it. Day's letter appears more as a challenge than a humble plea for guidance
from the 'Master'.
Throughout 1864 Day worked on two major projects, the stocking of the trout
in the Nilgiri HiUs and the expansion of his work on Cochin fishes into a complete
book. The trout experiment fortunately had the support of the Governor of Madras,
Sir Wilham Denison, who, as Governor of Tasmania, had initiated the second attempt
to transport salmon and trout eggs to the Antipodes (50 000 eggs sent out in the
Columbus to Tasmania in 1852 - see Roughley, 1966 : 270, for history of these
attempts). The project was unsuccessful, as had been that of Captain F. Chalmers
eleven years earher, the eggs hatching and dying en route. The solution to the
problem was the discovery by James Youl that eyed ova would develop very slowly
if cooled by ice (FM., Introduction). f In i860, Youl arranged a third shipment of
eggs to Tasmania, but the ice ran short and the eggs again died. Two years later
he sent some 50 000 eggs out in the Beautiful Star, but these faUed for the same
reason. Finally, in January 1864, Youl arranged for the packing of the eyed ova
between layers of moss in perforated wooden boxes surrounded by ice and he dis-
patched 100 000 salmon eggs and over 1000 brown trout eggs in the Norfolk, bound
* Two visitors' books in the Zoology Department, British Museum (Natural History) cover this period
(1841-56, 1857-70). Both are indexed but Day's name does not appear; since he did not sign the
ijooks during his visits in 1865 and 1870, one cannot be certain that lie did not go to the Museum in
1864.
t Burgess (1967 : 107) has pointed out that, amongst others. John Shaw, head keeper of the Duke of
Buccleuch at Drumlanrig Castle, had earlier reported on the effects of temperature on the development
of salmonid eggs in papers to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1836-43.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 25
for Melbourne. They arrived safely 84 days later, were shipped to Hobart and
although the salmon plantings did not succeed, the brown trout formed the original
stock in Tasmanian and later in Australian rivers (Roughley, 1966).
Wliile this final attempt was in progress, Day visited Youl in London (20 April
1864) and the latter demonstrated his ice technique (Day, i86Sa). The following
month Day drew up his plans for stocking the Nilgiri streams with trout and the
lakes with Indian lowland fishes, sending details to the Madras Government (19 July
1864, No. 115, MGPD.Proc, in Q658). The scheme was agreed (ibid.. No. 116),
an estimate of the cost asked for, and January or February of the coming year fixed
for the date of the experiment. Day had put the scheme to the P & O Steamship
Navigation Co., who assured him that his requirements for ice could be met (Q 658).
All seemed ready, but by 6 September Day was granted a further 6 months' sick
leave. On 14 September he wrote to Denison pleading only partial recovery of his
health and suggesting instead that the trout eggs be brought out by some com-
petent officer due for return to India at that time (2 November 1864, No. 14, MGPD.
Proc). It is doubtful if anyone, and particularly anyone who knew Day, could
have been deceived by this letter, yet for the record Day had nobly sacrificed his
chance to supervise the trout experiment. Not only did Day insist that the steam-
ship company was prepared to go to this trouble only in January or February,
when the ships were less crowded, but the Governor of Madras at least was aware
that trout eggs must be collected in winter. As Day anticipated, however, Denison
protested that Day was the right man to do the experiment and the Government
would be glad to hear from him when he was ready to undertake it (loc. cit.. No. 15).
In effect, he had extended his leave by a year.
Day seems to have been in so httle doubt about the outcome of his letter that
he had already initiated his second project, the book on Cochin fishes, and had taken
a year's lease on Andover Lodge at Park Place in Cheltenham. After a week in
lodgings in that town he moved into this 'nice httle house' on 17 October 1864
(Q 654), some weeks at least before he could possibly have expected an official reply
to his letter to Denison. In December he was promoted to Surgeon and he had
before him the happy prospect of an entire year devoted to ichthyology.
On Christmas Eve he wrote to Denison about the trout experiment (21 February
1865, No. 123, MGPD.Proc), perhaps anxious to keep the matter from being shelved,
but increasingly his energies were turned towards his second project, the production
of his book on Malabar fishes.
The Fishes of Malabar
The decision to expand his paper on Cochin fishes into a book may have been
taken by Day before he came back to England. The te.xt would be enlarged to
give more data on the fisheries of the Malabar coast and full descriptions would be
required for each species. Day's chief concern at this time was with the plates
that would be made from his drawings. He approached the printers WilUams &
Norgate of Henrietta St, who contacted Burchard Brothers, a firm of photolitho-
graphers in Berlin. This was the beginning of a long series of negotiations over the
production of the plates for the Fishes of Malabar. In July 1864 the printers had
z6 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAK
evidently heard from Berlin and gave an estimate of the cost per plate {i8 shillings)
and the cost of printing and paper for lOO copies (7 shillings) (making a cost of £32
for an edition of 200 copies with 20 plates) ; they warned that better photographs
could be produced if the drawings were 'a little distincter' {29 July 1864, Q654).
Earl}' in August Day wrote to Brisbane Neill reporting progress (9 August 1864,
Q654). He estimated the cost at £35 : 6 : o for 250 copies containing 50 plates,
thanked NeOl for the photographs, enclosed a list of plates, and said that the writing
was almost done and he could 'undertake to supply the whole by January'. In
the proof copy of the Fishes of Malabar (0 202) there is a single plate, not numbered
and not included in the final copy, which shows Senamts hontoo which was photo-
lithographed by Burchard Brothers of Berhn (another print of this is in the bound
volume of reprints Eg. 14).
Perhaps for reasons of economy, however, since Day had to bear the full cost of
the project, this method of reproduction was shortly to be abandoned in favour of
copper engraving (etching), a technique that Day had studied through friends at
the Ordnance Office (FM., Preface). Early in 1865, Day had decided on only
20 plates for the book (eventually 32 fishes on 20 plates), of which he had apparently
inscribed 10 (Day to Surgeon-Major Smith, c. January 1865, Q 654). The Ordnance
Survey Ofi&ce in Southampton offered to have the plates 'bitten in' and to furnish
an estimate of the cost of 'finishing' them (J. W. Peake to Day, 27 January 1865,
Q 654). However, Day had meanwhile sent four plates to be bitten in to the litho-
graphic firm of \Vm Day & Sons of Lincoln's Inn, London, and from them he received
an estimate for 'finishing' : 10 shillings per plate for biting in and £1 for additional
shading on three plates (30 January 1865, 654). Even then. Day seems to have
been undecided, for another firm was approached, Dison & Ross of St James' Place,
London, and another estimate given (2 February 1865, O 654). In April, Day was
in touch with yet another printer, T. Brettel of Rupert St, London, who sent him
estimates for editions of 250 and 500 copies (presumably this was for printing the
text, which in the end was done by G. Norman of Maiden Lane, London) (2 February
1865, Q 654).
By now the project was in full swing and probably occupied most of Day's time.
He had written to Bernard Ouaritch Ltd asking the firm to act as agent (the book
was eventually pubhshed under the Quaritch imprint) and their reply was enthusi-
astic : they recommended an edition of 500, all with coloured plates (28 February
1865, O654). Day was no doubt delighted, but Brisbane Neill, who eventually
saw the book through the press (FM., Preface), cautioned Day and advised only half
that number (10 April 1865, O 654). The number actually printed is not recorded,
nor the proportion of coloured copies (47 copies remained unsold in 1897 - Quaritch,
in litt.).
In May 1865 Day WTote to Gantz Brothers of Mount Road in Madras and they
rephed that they would be pleased to sell the book in Madras and have their name
on the title page, but Day seems to have changed his mind or perhaps merely
retained the firm as agents (Q 654).
At about this time also. Day drafted a letter in which he hoped that 'H.E. the
S of S [Secretary of State, i.e. Sir Charles Wood] for Incha will be pleased to sanction
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 27
such pecuniary aid to my proposed work on the Fishes of Malabar as will enable me
to publish it previous to my return to India in 1866' (Q654). There is no reply
but almost certainly he received a polite rebuff.
The Ordnance Office in Southampton seems to have been unable to complete the
plates and probably recommended the local firm of D. Law to Day. By July Law
had given Day three sample plates, with an estimate of £1 : 5 : o to £3 : o : per
plate, together with some hints on etching (30 June 1865, O 654). It was this firm
that completed the remainder of the plates (bill for £30 : 4 : 0, together with com-
plete list of the 20 plates sent g August 1865, Q 654).
The time was now ripe for sohciting subscribers. Day evidently sent out some
kind of prospectus (probably printed) but no copy exists amongst the papers ex-
amined. On a spare page of his proof copy of the Fishes of Malabar (0 602), how-
ever. Day wrote forty-six names in a 'List of subscription papers personally circu-
lated, with the result'. The result was disappointing : only twenty-six requests
for coloured copies and fifteen for plain. Day must have persisted, although some
of the early subscribers let him down, since the printed Ust at the end of the book
contains only twenty-five subscribers but fifty copies taken (thirty-one coloured and
nineteen plain). Like many young authors. Day had hoped for a better response,
especially from official bodies in India. In July he had written to the Secretary of
State, Sir Charles Wood, submitting specimen sheets of the book, but the latter
would 'not pledge patronage of a book not yet completed' (Q654). Eventually,
the Secretary of State agreed to subscribe, but to only two copies (coloured). Day
was furious and composed an irate reply (undated draft, O 654) pointing out that he
had expected forty copies to be taken, as had been done for Gray's publication of
the Hardwicke drawings (Gray, 1830-35) ; that his expenses were such that he
would not have gone to press without proper patronage ; and that the public in
India would be aware from the hst of subscribers to be published in the book that
scientific publications did not meet with official support (O654). However, there
were compensations. The Rajah of Cochin put his name down for six copies, the
Maharajah of Travancore for five, the Madras Government took five, the Bombay
Government four, the Medical Department at Bombay seven, and so on. Coloured
copies were to be sold at 4 guineas and plain copies at 2 guineas.
The next step in promoting the book was to dedicate it to someone of importance.
Day chose Edward, Prince of Wales. The scheme might have succeeded had it
not been for the intervention of Albert Giinther. As it was, Day merely received
a polite reply from Marlborough House stating that His Royal Highness 'finds it
expedient to act upon the rule of declining to accept dedications from authors with
whom he is not acquainted, either personally or through former writings' (Herbert
Fisher, Private Secretary, to Day, 26 July 1865, O 654). For Day this was clearly
a great disappointment. What he did not know, and perhaps never knew, was
that this apparently plausible refusal was based on no expedient rule devised by
the young Prince, but was entirely the result of Giinther's opinion - for Giinther
had, in the eyes of Marlborough House, utterly damned the book.
In July Day evidently sent a kind of brochure or specimen sheet to Marlborough
House and in turn this was passed by Herbert Fisher to Giinther with a note asking :
28 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
'Will you tell me in confidence whether the book referred to in this note is likely
to be of sufficient importance to justify a dedication to the Prince of Wales.' (July
1865, BMNH.MS.G. 15.) Although Giinther's actual reply may have been less
strongly worded, his feelings about Day's book are clear from an undated draft
reply, which deserves to be quoted in full.
I happen to know the work referred to in your note, it ha\'ing been shown to
me by the author some time ago. I regret to see that against my advice,
endeavours are made to pubUsh it. The author is a beginner in this branch of
zoology and the discoveries made by him are, as regards intrinsic value or
number, not important enough to warrant the publication of a separate work.
The illustrations are from a scientific point of view of a very inferior description,
and frequentlj- inaccurate.
I am sorry to be obUged to give so unfavourable an account of the book, but I
should be very sorry to see it coming out in the form alluded to in your note,
as it is sure to provoke rather sharp [deleted and 'just' substituted] criticisms
and certainh' will not meet \\ith the approval of Zoologists.
(undated, BMNH.MS.G. 15)
Fisher replied, thanking Gunther for information about 'Mr. Day's proposed work'
■(26 July 1865, BMNH.MS.G. 15) and the matter was closed.
Gunther's action is curious, not least in view of his subsequent review of the
Fishes of Malabar, of which he wTOte : 'This book will be of great service to the
local naturaUst. . . . The plates are executed by the author, who has bestowed
much labour on them, and are certainly very accurate' ; he also strongly recom-
mended the purchase of the coloured copies (Zoological Record, 1865 : 166-167).
Giinther's criticisms of the book were solely on the grounds that Day had drawn no
zoogeographical conclusions and that some e.xplanation was needed for the fact
that Day described 230 species (64 species of other authors omitted), whereas Cantor,
in three and a half years at Penang, collected some 380 species. Day's Fishes of
Cochin was also mentioned, but with a mere indication that the same information
was in the Fishes of Malabar. Gunther, as Day and others were later to discover,
could be a most scathing critic, but in this review there is no hint of the tone adopted
for Marlborough House. The reason may lie partly in the relationship between
Gunther and Day during this period.
Gunther's letter to Fisher says that the work had been 'shown to me by the author
some time ago ..." and it suggests that he had personally advised Day not to pubhsh
it. This may have been done on one or both of the occasions that Day presented
his two parts of the Fishes of Cochin to the Zoological Society (10 January and 14
March 1865).
Following the first Zoological Society meeting. Day wrote to Brisbane Neill com-
plcdning that Giinther had, unknown to Day, just described one of the specimens
Day had presented to the British Museum, giving it the name Catopra malaharica
in the November issue of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History (1864 : 375) ;
Day said that he believed the fish to be Badis chloris, but would have used the name
malabarica had he known Giintlier's intentions ; he continued : 'Will you kindly
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 29
ask him to be so good as not to name any of the other new fish which I have pre-
sented as I intend all to appear in my forthcoming papers & subsequently in my
book.' (Q 654, undated draft.) In another draft (written out neatly by his wife,
Q 654) Day said : 'My idea is to take no notice of his paper which I have not seen
until today.' It is interesting to note that Day did not write directly to Giinther.
However, he wrote to Philip Sclater, then editor of the Proceedings of the Zoological
Society, on the same subject and said that he did not wish 'to dispute his [Gunther's]
statements respecting the fish . . . [and] ... do not wish to fall foul of his opinion ..."
but he could not alter the name he had used, i.e. Badis chloris (undated draft, Q 654).
Perhaps this was answered by Sclater's letter, dated 16 January 1865, saying that
proofs of his Cochin paper would be sent in due course and 'No one will make any
alterations except yourself and / (as general Editor).' (Q 654.)
The extent of Day's indignation can be judged from the soothing tones that Neill
felt obliged to adopt. Replying to Day, Neill advised that 'if you are to comment
on Gunther's nomenclature or remarks it would be both civil & prudent to let Giinther
see the paper privately before it be read or published. The Scotch proverb says
wisely "Let sleeping dogs lie" i.e. lie still [the necessity for this little afterthought
speaks volumes]. If Giinther must be corrected, why what must be must be ; but
there wiU be an advantage to both yourself and him in coming to an understanding
as to what is to go to the public & in what form.' (19 January 1865, 654.) In an
undated draft from Day to Neill, to which the above may have been a reply. Day
threatened that in his next paper 'I must draw attention to numerous mistakes
and omissions in Giinther's Catalogue. ... Do not mention these things to Giinther,
who by the way will not see my paper again until it is printed. It is already begun.'
(? 18 January 1865, draft, 654.)
Neill's letter may have had some effect, however, for Day next wrote an extremely
polite letter to 'My Dear D' Giinther' reminding him of his promise to 'run your
eye over my ichthyological papers' and asking for advice before sending his work to
the Zoological Society (22 January 1865, BMNH.MS.Z. - see p. 24). Neill wrote
to Day, having apparently heard that Day had written to Giinther (23 January
1865, Q 654), but the affair must have dragged on since Neill later wrote : 'Perhaps
your best plan is to let Giinther alone at present and when you have got at a rare
specimen not in the B M Coll. send it as a peace offering' (11 February 1865, Q 654).
Three days later, Neill wrote again with the advice to follow '. . . Mr. Benson in
regard to Giinther's new fish. I suspect you are right, but the many will be swayed
by authority, indeed must be unless they have the fish before them.' (14 February
1865, O 654.)
Eventually, Day gave in. He deleted Badis chloris from his proof and reluctantly
substituted Giinther's name Catopra malabarica, insisting, however, that in his
opinion the fish was not a Catopra but probably a Badis. He then asked the opinion
of Sir John Richardson, who tactfully suggested that he send a specimen to Pieter
Bleeker. It is not clear whether this was Day's first contact with Bleeker, but the
latter evidently pronounced the fish to be undoubtedly a 'Nandus as at present
constituted, but which will probably at a future date have to be placed in a distinct,
but nearly allied genus' (FM. : 130). In his reply to Bleeker, Day said that he had
30 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
're-examined the Catopra Malabarica (Giinther) and also made a skeleton of one
specimen, and now see clearly what you have been so good as to point out - that
it is a Nandtis. I would here observe upon its ha\ing pseudobranchiae which are
absent in the Nandus marmoratus.' (13 August 1865, RMNH.MS.) In the Fishes
of Malabar the species is placed in Nandus, with Paranandus suggested as a possible
new generic name. It is quite clear from Day's footnote that 'the expressed opinion
of that excellent ichthj-ologisf, i.e. Giinther, in deference to which Day had originally
adopted the name Catopra, was an opinion that must now contend with that of
Bleeker as well as of Day, if not of Sir John Richardson (FM. : 130). Giinther
reacted immediately and in the Zoological Record (1866 : 141-142) poured scorn on
both Day and Bleeker; Day 'is confirmed in this view by the skeleton, as if he ever
had seen a skeleton of Catopra,' while 'It is to the Recorder quite inexplicable how
even Bleeker could add to the confusion by referring it to Nandus. The essential
character of Catopra is the singular dentition of the bottom and roof of the caNity
of the mouth ; to separate C. malabarica as a distinct genus on account of the entire
praeoperculum is a proceeding quite consistent with D'' Bleeker's systematic attempts
generally, but which will not be adopted by the majority of ichthyologists'. In the
Fishes 0/ India Day placed the species in Jerdon's Pristolepis, in the subgenus
Paranandus, with Catopra as a second subgenus for Bleeker's C. fasciata.
When it came to acknowledging the help he had received in producing the Fishes
of Malabar, Day mentioned only one ichthyologist, Bleeker, who had examined
specimens for him 'and been so good as to give me his opinion upon them' (FM. : vi).
The ne.xt paragraph gives a list of species presented to the British Museum, thus
emphasizing the omission of Giinther's name.
Giinther's letter to Marlborough House may reflect, even if unconsciously (for
Giinther was no doubt a fair man), some personal irritation with the manner in
which Day was producing the book. Giinther implied that he had seen at least a
number of the plates. It seems unlikely, however, that Day could have been
persuaded to take the material for the book to Giinther for criticism after the
exchange of letters cited above. Day seems to have passed his Cochin paper to
Giinther for criticism on or before 22 January (implied in his letter of that date
cited above). Since the text of the book was chiefly an expansion of the Cochin
paper, Giinther may have felt justified in criticizing the former on the basis of the
latter. Possibly, Giinther saw some of the drawings at the 10 January meeting of
the Zoological Society. In March, however. Day wrote to Quaritch (draft of
March, no date, Q 654) promising to bring 'specimen copies of several perhaps half
of the plates finished and coloured ..." and it is possible that Day combined this
visit with the reading (14 March) of the second part of his paper on Cochin fishes.
At this meeting, and perhaps elated by the enthusiasm shown by Quaritch (500
coloured copies), Day showed off his drawings. In a report of this meeting in the
Medical Times & Gazette (cutting, also Day's draft, Q 654) Day was said to have
'. . . read a most interesting paper on the hard-rayed fishes of Cochin on the
Malabar coast. . . . He brought about forty most beautiful coloured drawings
and engravings which he had done to illustrate his collection'. At this meeting
he must surely have announced his intentions regarding the book. The only
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 31
explanation that can be offered regarding Gunther's volte-face on the drawings in
his review is that what Gunther saw were the earlier plates done by Wm Day &
Sons, which Day perhaps redrew subsequently for Law of Southampton, possibly
after criticism by Gunther at the second Zoological Society meeting.
Whatever the sequence of events, the book should have been essentially ready
for the printer by August when Law sent his bill for the 20 plates. There is no
reference to the book in September, but at the end of October Day wrote to the
Secretary of State for IncUa and spoke of the 'work now in press' (31 October 1865,
Q 654). In an undated and almost illegible draft to the Chief [? Secretary], written
in August, Day wrote : 'I have the honour to enclose the prospectus of a work I
have in the press and which will be pubHshed in October. ... It is entirely com-
pleted but not printed.' (0 654.) The draft was probably of Day's letter to the
Chief Secretary to the Madras Government, written 17 August and soliciting sub-
scriptions (27 September 1865, No. 147, MGPD.Proc, in Q 654). The Introduction
in the proof copy (0 602) is dated 'Cheltenham, October 27th, 1865' and it was
perhaps in about mid-October that Day received galley proofs since he appears to
have sent at least those Introduction pages relevant to early trout planting experi-
ments to James Youl (whose name and work are mentioned, FM. : xiii) and to have
received them back 'without any alteration' (Youl to Day, 28 October 1865, Q 653).
One would have expected the book to have appeared at least by late November.
In the event, there was a considerable delay, possibly in finishing the colour work,
and there is even Day's statement (TIF. : 63) that the book was '. . . pubHshed
by myself, in 1866. . .'.
In October the year's lease on the Cheltenham house expired and Day moved
to the Isle of Wight for long enough to justify a printed label 'Dr F. Day, Care of
Rev. F. Stockdale, Haven Street, Ryde, Isle of Wight' (Q 651). In the published
version of the book the date of the Introduction has been put back from 27 October
to 27 August (although no correction appears in the marked proof), presumably
because by October Day was no longer in Cheltenham. The title page, even at
this late stage, was left dated MDCCCLXV. The page proof was apparently
corrected in Ryde in December since it is inscribed 'Francis Day, Cumberland
House, St Thomas Street, Ryde, Dec. 15th 1865'. In fact, two copies of the work,
one coloured and one plain, were available by mid-December. Day sent them,
with a letter dated 18 December, to the Secretary of State for India, speaking of
'. . . a work just pubUshed by me on the "Fishes of Malabar" ' (0 O54). For his
pains, he received a cold rebuff ; the Secretary of State would take two coloured
copies, but these would be 'obtained in the usual manner through the Bookseller
to this Office. . . . The two copies of the work forwarded by you, are herewith
returned.' (6 January 1866, Q 654.)
The main bulk of the copies for subscribers may not have been available until
early in 1866. Day apparently asked Brisbane Neill to dispatch these since he
himself was fully engaged in packing up their temporary home in Ryde and seeing
to the care of the trout eggs. In a letter from Neill to Day, written much later
that year, Neill said that he had done as Day instructed and 'I believe I wrote to
you on the subject before you left Southampton. ... I wrote a short note with
32 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AXD P. K. TALWAR
each copy stating that it was forwarded by your desire . . .' (8 June 1866, Q 654).
Day left England on 4 February. Two days earlier Neill wTote to Bleaker to say
My friend and former brother officer Mr Day of the Medical Department of
the Madras Army, having been obliged to proceed to India before the pubhca-
tion of his work on the Fishes of Malabar, has requested me to see that a copy
with coloured plates should be sent, with his compliments, for your acceptance.
Mess'* Wilhams and Norgate, foreign booksellers here, have undertaken to
transmit it to vou and will forward it by the first opportunity. . . .
{2 February 1866, RMNH.MS.)
It is not clear whether the copy was then ready for dispatch or whether plain
copies were available but not the coloured ones. Had copies been available in
December, Daj' would surely have had time to address the covering notes himself,
at least for the plain copies.
Two copies of the Fishes of Malabar were recei\'ed by the India Office on 5 February
1S66 and on the 21st of that month one of these was withdrawn and passed over to
the India Museum (lOR., Day Books - see p. 118 below). It is perhaps significant
that these two copies were sent at the time that NeUl was dealing with the coloured
copy for Bleeker, suggesting that copies were not available until as late as early
February. On the other hand, the books may have arrived from the printer in
batches, of which these were not the first.
For purposes of dating, however, it is preferable to retain the accepted date of
1S65. A plain and a coloured copy were sent out on about 18 December and
although this is only three days after the date in the proof copy, there is no evidence
that the latter date truly signifies receipt or return of the proof ; the copies sent to
the Secretary of State were certainly definitive and the date on the proof might
even refer to the date that these copies were available. Two coloured copies were
kept by Day and remained within the family rather than being part of the donation
to Cheltenham hbrary (Eg. 21). One of these may have been the coloured copy
sent to the Secretary of State, but more hkely these were copies for his children
since the ornamental bindings are identical and one was certainly bound in 1876
(receipt inside). Neither copy is marked or annotated.
Although the Fishes of Malabar is overshadowed by the Fishes of India, it was
nonetheless an ambitious work for a man with no ichthyological training. It shows
the extent to which Day was able to learn from what literature he could acquire in
Cochin, for the fish fauna is rich and somewhat bewUdering to the newcomer.
Had Day not clashed with Giinther he might have spent more time at the British
Museum comparing his material with known species, but even without this it is
clear that he was striving towards a degree of professionahsm that would soon
overtake his medical work.
The trout experiment 1866
Day had been back in England for almost two years and the period marked a
turning point in his career. For some thirteen years he had carried out his medical
duties with competence and no doubt enthusiasm, using liis spare moments for
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 33
what his superiors obviously regarded as an interesting hobby. Official recognition
of his book might fall short of Day's own expectations, but he was probably seen
as one of those talented officers, like Major-General Hardwicke, Brian Hodgson
and others before him, who could make a worthwhile contribution outside the
field of his duties, but without impairing the latter.* For Day, however, this was
not enough : he wanted to be a professional naturahst.
In the latter part of 1864, if not earlier. Day began searching for some kind of
civil employment. In December he received confidential news from 'Smith'
(Surgeon-Major George Smith of the Madras Medical College) that a committee
had been appointed to review the possibilitj' of affiliating the Medical CoUege with
Madras University, in which case a Professor of Comparative Anatomy would be
required ; Smith promised to keep Day informed of developments (12 December
1864, Q 654). Day did not get the post, if indeed it materialized at this time, but
he decided on an even more attractive scheme.
Some twenty years before, the post of Naturalist to the Madras Presidency had
been created and for a short time it was filled by Dr Christie Turnbull. It had
since lain vacant and Day, with his usual energy, drew up a printed memorandum
headed 'Observations on the importance of the appointment ot Naturahst to the
Madras Government'. In October 1865 he sent copies of this memorandum to
Sir Walter Elliot, as well as to Brisbane Neill (and probably to a number of others)
(Elliot to Neill, 6 November 1865, Q 654) and on 31 October he made a formal
application to the Secretary of State, enclosing a memorandum and, for good
measure, 'Specimens of my own drawings & engravings for a work now in press'
(Q654). A fortnight later. Day's hopes were dashed; the India Office thanked
him for his letter and enclosures but regretted that the post of Naturahst could
not be offered to him (16 November 1865, Q654). To Day's disappointment was
added the refusal of the Secretary of State, only a week earlier, to subscribe to
more than two copies of the Fishes of Malabar, not the forty copies that Day had
felt to be the recognized number (undated draft, reply to letter No. 1807, of
9 November 1865, Q654).
Meanwhile, Day was busy with the move from Cheltenham to Ryde, with the
publicity for the book and, after a year's delaj', with arrangements to begin the
planting of trout in the rivers of the Nilgiri Hills near Ootacamund. In November
he acknowledged receipt of £60 for the trout e.xperiment from tlie Madras Govern-
ment and planned on 'leaving Southampton, with the Ova, on February 4th, 1866,
in the P. and O. Steamer' (17 November 1865, Q 654). Negotiations were restarted
over the supply of ice, especially for the difficult overland transfer by rail from the
ship at Alexandria to a second ship at Suez (the Canal was not opened for another
three years) and six stout boxes were procured. Three large slate troughs were
then sent out to Madras for the reception of the eggs at Ootacamund.
Before the end of the year Day was in touch with his friend from student days,
Frank Buckland (1826-1880). Like Day -but after a year as House Surgeon at
* A rather brief list of such contributions from members of the Indian Medical Service is given by
Magnanand (1955), based on the scattered information in Crawford (1930). Although full of omissions
(including Day's works) and not covering work published in journals, it is still an impressive list.
34 P- J P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
the Hospital - Buckland had begun a militarj- career (Assistant Surgeon, 2nd Life
Guards), but disappointment over promotion, coupled with growing success in his
literary and scientific acti\dties, led him to resign his commission in 1S63 (Bompas,
1905). One of Buckland's activities during the next two years was the collecting
and hatching of trout eggs* and Day could not have been more fortunate in his
choice of a companion. The Hampshire streams around Southampton appeared
ideal, being close enough to the port for the eggs to be brought to the ship with
little difficulty. In early December a friend of Day's at the Ordnance Survey
Office invited Day to view the 'Club waters' (Dennis James to Day, g December
1865, Q 654).
The result of this visit is not recorded, but Day apparently had some trouble
in persuading proprietors of trout streams to allow him to collect eggs, some ha\'ing
already promised other collectors and some beheving that the stripping of eggs
was harmful to the females (MS. notes in Q61). Eventually he was given per-
mission by Melville Portal, owner of the papermill at Laverstoke Park near Michel-
dever in Hampshire (the Portals had for generations supplied the paper for Bank
of England notes). Melville Portal was married to Lady Charlotte Mary, daughter
of the 2nd Earl Minto, whose father had been Governor-General of India (1807-14) ;
Day may have known a member of the family in India.
Day and Buckland arrived at Laverstoke on iS January and at 9 am began the
cold and tedious business of netting this stretch of the river Test (Q 654). At first
they caught only males or spent females, but after some four hours of wading they
had several thousand eggs. 'It was raining incessantly all day [and] at 2.30 I
became so cold from wading that I had to stop and go to the Red Lion' Day later
wrote (Q654). Buckland, on the other hand, was probably in his element. Of
another occasion he boasted : 'I candidly confess I amazingly enjoy a day's trout
egg collecting . . . again it is cold work, and I am as fond of cold as a polar bear.'
(Buckland, 1873.)!
Buckland took a few hundred eggs with him to hatch out by way of experiment
at Windsor Park. It was getting late and Day stayed the night, leaving the tin
can with the eggs in the river and taking the first train to Southampton in the
morning, the can slung on a stick laid across the seats of the railway carriage (O 61).
At the port, Day carefully packed the eggs into si.x boxes of i-inch pine supplied
by James Youl, the bottom of each filled with charcoal, the sides and bottom
perforated, and the eggs layered with moss. These were then placed in the refri-
geration room untU 2 February when they were stowed on board the S.S. Mongolia.
The ship sailed two days later and on arriving at Alexandria (16 February) the
boxes were transferred to the train for the crucial overland journey across the desert
* Burgess (1967) has given an excellent account of Buckland's involvement with the Acclimatization
Society, with fish hatching and its demonstration at the South Kensington Museum in 1863, and with
James Youl's first partial success in sending salmon and trout eggs to Tasmania in 1S64. Buckland w-as
also instrumental in founding Land and Water (a competitor to The Field) in 1S65 and it was in this
weekly journal that Day later published his Tour through the fisheries 0/ India and numerous small
articles.
t To commemorate the occasion, Buckland sent to Day a few days later a copy of his book Fish
hatching (Buckland, 1863). In the Cheltenham copy (Q 61) is the message 'To his friend F Day from
his friend The Author Jan 22 1866 In memory of Trout eggs Jan iSth 1866'.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 35
to the S.S. Bengal at Suez. All went well, however, and the ship docked in Madras
on 12 March. The Public Department of the Madras Government arranged for
the boxes to travel by rail to Coimbatore, a distance of about four hundred and
fifty kilometres, and Patrick Grant (1820-1904), the Collector there, had them
taken by palanquin, with relays of bearers, the remaining eighty kilometres to
Ootacamund where they arrived on 15 March. A brick 'fish house' had been con-
structed in the Government Gardens to contain the slate troughs and two further
troughs of teak, the whole system being gently irrigated by water from a nearby
stream.
Two months had now elapsed since Buckland and Day had collected the eggs
and one can imagine Day's anxiety, although he had seen ova of 93 and 143 days
'treated by ice' when he had visited James Youl, two years before (19 July 1864,
No. 115, MGPD.Proc). In the event, the eggs arrived in good condition and for
a fortnight or so the experiment promised well. On 31 March, however, there
were violent thunderstorms and the water flowing through the Fish Hatching
House brought not onty detritus but small leeches which fed on the eggs. Two
days later Day reported that 'since Saturday afternoon [i April] a very great
mortality has set in amongst the trout eggs, as many as 300 having died since that
time' (newspaper cuttings, probably Neilgherry Excelsior, also Madras Times for
12 April 1866, 654). By Tuesday the mortality was still continuing and he had
found that 'a small Annelid of the Suctorial order is destroying the eggs' (loc. cit.).
The next day Denison visited the hatchery and saw the sad state of the trout
experiment (loc. cit.). Day did what he could but eggs continued to die and by
the following Monday all was over. Day published a detailed account of the trout
experiment (Day, 1868a) and made an official report to Grant dated 14 May 1866
(4 June 1866, No. 3S15, MGRD.Proc, in Q 658 ; see also draft letter to Grant,
2 April 1866, O 654).
To have brought the experiment so far, after successfully overcoming all the
difficulties of transporting eggs from a Hampshire stream to the Nilgiri Hills, and
then to have failed as a result of a chance thunderstorm, was a bitter blow for Day.
He wrote of his disappointment to James Youl and to Frank Buckland (22 July -
Eg. I : 23) and received sympathetic replies (Youl to Day, 6 June 1866, Day to
Buckland, 23 September 1866, Q654). One can imagine, therefore, the effect on
Day of Giinther's crude remark in the Zoological Record the following year : the
failure had been 'foreseen by all acquainted with the nature of Salmonoid fishes'
(Gunther, 1868b : 151). The failure had surely not been foreseen by Frank Buck-
land or James Youl or Colonel Denison ; or if it had, then they were as wrong as
Gunther, for two years later Mr W. G. Mclvor, the Kew gardener appointed Super-
intendent of the Government Gardens at Ootacamund in 1848, succeeded in bring-
ing out (as fry rather than as eggs) trout from Loch Leven, as well as tench and
carp (Day, 1876b : 562). In 1873 Day caught tench in the Nilgiri streams and,
although the trout did not do quite so well, Daj' received a specimen of 16-5 cm
three years later, thus proving that trout would breed there (Daj', 1876b : 564).
As he later noted (Day, 1887 : 184, footnote), this paper disproving Giinther's
forecast was merely mentioned by the Zoological Record without comment. The
36 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
following year Day had driven the point home even further. In the third part of the
Fishes of India {August 1877 : 508) he illustrated the NUgiri specimen and referred
to Giinther as 'wise after the event and may-be not anticipating that it would be
renewed . . .'. Again this eUcited no comment. In 1S80 Giinther even persisted,
saying in his Introduction to the study of fishes (p. 641), '. . . whilst the attempt of
transferring them into the low hill streams of India ended (as could be foreseen)
in a total failure'. As Day pointed out, at 7000 feet [2100 m] or more, the Nilgiri
waters were scarcely 'low hill streams' and as the fishes had evidently bred, the
attempt was hardly a failure. (Day, 1887 : 184.)*
Day now turned in earnest to the second part of his project in the hills, the
stocking of lowland fishes in the Nilgiris. The idea had been suggested by John
ilcClelland (1805-75) some fifteen years earlier (FM. : xi) as a means of suppljdng
fresh fish to hiU sanitaria, military cantonments and towns where Europeans
resided. On 16 April Day asked for formal permission to start the experiment
(Day, 1868a), although he had originally applied when Sir William Denison had
stUl been Governor of Madras (19 July 1864, No. 116, MGPD.Proc). A month
later (23 May 1866) permission was granted (Day, 1868a), but Day had probably
spent the time sur\'e}dng the area. On the upper plateau of the Nilgiris he found
only one indigenous fish, Paradanio neilgherriensis (Da\', 1867a : 282), yet the lake
at Ootacamund and the Pykara and Avalanche rivers appeared to be suitable, if not
for trout, then for some of the local fishes from further down the rivers (27 June
1866, No. 4379, Proc. Board of Revenue ; also, MGRD.Proc, No. 525). In his
first experiments he brought up fish in tin cans from BUhcul and Seegoor and
from the lower reaches of the Pykara, but he later settled on MettapoUiam on the
Bowany river (about 300 m above sea level) as a better source for fish. Metta-
polUam was some 40 km from Ootacamund and it meant setting out with the
Indian bearers at 6.30 pm, travelling through the cool of the night, and arriving
at Ootacamund at 7.0 am. To avoid this long journey - as much for the fish as
for himself - he set up a stock pond at Coonor, within 16 km of Ootacamund, into
which the fish could be put, leaving him merely a twice-weekly visit to collect them.
In the end, he favoured earthenware pots for transporting the fish. He noted the
tendency for the bearers to half empty the pots on the way up, refilling them when
they got near to their destination, but he overcame this by a system of rewards
for each Uve fish that arrived. By the end of the experiment he had brought up
16 eels, 28 large carp (Barhus carnaticus), 159 snakeheads [Ophiocephalus, chiefly
0. guacha), 116 miscellaneous cyprinids (Laheo, Rashora, Paradanio) and a few
other large Barbiis species (Day, 1868a : 53).
Permission for this experiment had originally been granted by Denison (19 July
1864, No. 116, MGPD.Proc), who was clearly much in sympathy with Day's
aspirations to ichthyology, and for a while all went well. Day was appointed to
the post of Medical Store Keeper at Madras (26 May), with a salar\' of Rs 1000
per month, although by staying in the hUls he forfeited an extra Rs no that went
• In the billiard room of the Ootacamund Club is a suitable token of Day's faith in the trout project:
a 2-5 kg specimen from the Pykara river, caught in 191 1.
FRANCIS DAY {1829-1889) 37
with the post and in addition bore the cost of the stocking experiments (undated
draft to Patrick Grant, Collector at Coimbatore, Q654). Nevertheless, this was
the kind of work that interested him. His wife Emma was with him at Ootaca-
mund, he had taken a small house until the beginning of October (when he was
due to return to Madras), and in spite of the cold and wet weather he was clearly
enjoying himself in the Nilgiris (see below, p. go).
Unfortunately, this pleasant state of affairs was to be brought to an abrupt
end. Denison retired in March 1866 and was replaced as Governor by Francis,
9th Baron Napier of Murchistoun. Lord Napier was a very different man and
not nearly so sympathetic to Day's fish experiments. In addition, and perhaps
initially guiding Napier's attitude to Day, there were some who criticized Day's
'holiday' in the hills. In the South Indian Observer a lampoon appeared under the
heading 'Dark Night, Esq., F.L.S., F.Z.S.' (undated cutting, Q654). This satir-
ized Day's report on the Nilgiri experiments, which had been extensively quoted
in the Neilgherry Excelsior (cutting, about June 1866, Q654), and it concluded
with the comment 'we have no doubt Government, who seem quite struck with
the production, will see the propriety of allowing D"' Night to reside on the hills
on full pay, and continue piscatorial researches which redound not only to his own
but to his country's honour'. Above the cutting is written 'skit written by D'
Furnell to S. India Observer on Frank's Report (subsequently apologized . . .).
Too absurd to be annoying'. Of Furnell, C. A. Lawson of the Madras Times had
written to Day, 'I heard from Furnell lately but I know little about him and don't
wish to know more. He has very strange ways which do not please friends. How-
ever, we are all of us peculiar to a greater or lesser degree and must make allowances
for a man settled in a place like Cochin.' (26 January 1865, Q 654.)*
In July the blow fell. James Shaw (1809-89), Principal Inspector-General of
Hospitals, wrote that Day 'must think very soon about coming down to this hot
part of the world ... I will send you up an official instruction but you had
better be prepared for the move - I write this with Lord Napier's knowledge.'
(9 ? July 1866, Q 654.) Day wrote hastily to a fellow surgeon, George Bidie (1830-
1913), and received the reassuring reply that 'At first D"' Shaw thought it necessary
that you should come down, but last night he sent for me and asked, if I would
take charge of the Lunatic Asylum until you came, in case you were allowed to
remain at Ooty [Ootacamund] for some time longer. I said of course that I had
no objections as the charge involves httle or no work, and so it is all arranged
that you can stay until the [Medical] College [opens ?] the first Monday in October.
... I am glad to communicate to you the good news.' (24 July 1866, Q 654.)
Although Shaw seems to have been on Day's side, the respite was only temporary.
Lord Napier, or someone in the Madras Government, was determined to remove
Day from the hills before October. The posting that they chose for Day could
not have been more unpleasant. Kurnool, on the Kistna river, was perhaps the
most unpopular of any within Madras Presidency, being generally considered a
* Michael Cudmore Furnell (1829-88), acting Garrison Assistant Surgeon at Fort St George in 1866
and Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the Medical College in Madras; previously Civil Surgeon
at Cochin (Crawford, 1930; MAL., 1866).
38 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AXD P. K. TALWAR
'penal station'.* As Day later wrote to Buckland, one officer in three either died
there or left sick ever}' year and of the past twenty years only two (actually fi\-e)
had been free of cholera ; in June there had been a serious cholera outbreak in
'this abominable place' and one in four died, or one in three per month of those
present for duty (23 September 1866, Q 654) . The Madras Times noted Day's
posting and asked 'Is this intended as a reward to the doctor for his eminent services
in pisciculture?' (undated cutting, Q 654). The Neilgherry Excelsior was even more
outspoken :
The fish experiment ... an order was issued for the discontinuance of the
fish experiment. Dr Day was directed immediately on the arrival of Lord
Napier, not to go to JIadras to resume his appointment there, but to proceed
to Kurnool. It was hoped that the endeavours of Dr Day to introduce low
country fish would be supported - instead of this Lord Napier sends him down
at once to a penal settlement.
(i September 1866, cutting, Q 654)
Day then suggested that he relieve an officer in Madras who could be sent to
Kurnool, but Clarence Cooper (1830-1924, Surgeon at Madras - Cra^vford, 1930)
wrote that this was no solution since the Madras officers were already doing double-
duty ; he himself was out of health, Mrs Croudace (wife of Asst Surgeon Thomas
Croudace at Kurnool) had become deranged, and Day must come to help (Cooper
to Day, 25 August 1866, Q 654). Day was not convinced of this urgency and later
complained that he had been sent 'not to meet a sudden emergency outbreak of
illness, but to relieve an official surgeon who wishes to proceed to [...?] on
furlough' (Day to Grant, undated draft, 654).
Day was justifiably angry since his fish stocking programme was proceeding well
and he had a network of Indian collectors who brought him live fishes from the
lower reaches of rivers to place in the Ootacamund lake and the Pykara river (many
letters and receipts, O 654). By now he had stocked about three hundred fishes
(of ten species - Day, 1868a) and the local European community was probably
s\Tnpathetic over his sudden transfer, although one can see Day's hand behind
the following newspaper report (whicli appeared just after Day left).
If the stocking of the Hill waters is continued as it has been this month [August],
we trust that it will be in our power at a future date to congratulate the resi-
dents on this experiment, the success of which appears to be now almost a
certainty, and we sincerely hope that nothing will be allowed to interfere with
its final accomplishment.
(Probably Neilgherry Excelsior, repeated in part in perhaps Madras Times
dated 28 August 1866, cuttings, Q 654)
On 22 August Day was given notice that he was appointed, as from the next
day, to be in medical charge of the 28th Regiment of Native Infantry at Kurnool
• This was not the first time that Day had tried to avoid a Kurnool posting. Some years earlier he
had arrived in Madras to find that his detachment w£is leaving for Kurnool the next morning. Although
urged to announce his arrival officially, he waited two days; his substitute, Dr Cheyne, 'died of cholera
on the road' (Eg. i : 93).
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 39
and that he was to proceed there immediately. The Neilgherry Excelsior (loc. cit.)
commented on the 'peremptory and unnecessarily harsh nature of his removal', for
Day was 'deprived of his privilege of going to Madras en route, to get his low country
clothing, his instruments, &c.' Day was furious and wrote to Shaw insisting that
he must take up his post as Store Keeper in Madras, having strong reasons 'w'^'' I
c'' explain in an interview but cannot write' ; he pointed out that he had no cloth-
ing, books or instruments ; and that his wife had been ill since Saturday and 'if
you will let me go to Madras you will see her & judge for yourself what the possi-
bihties are of getting her to Kurnool' (copy, 23 August 1866, O 654). Shaw replied,
presumably fairly sternly, but the letter did not reach Day in time and Day seems
to have telegraphed his intention to come to Madras. Shaw must have then tele-
graphed a refusal, for Day later apologized and reported his departure for Kurnool
as being so sudden 'that we had neither pillows, mattresses, and scarcely clothes
with us' (copy. Day to Shaw, 5 September 1866, Q654).
In his letter to Buckland cited above. Day gave vent to his bitterness at having
to abandon the fish stocking experiment.
With the most flattering assurance that my piscultural labours are the most
trivial Med. duties in the Presidency, I am dispatched here [Kurnool] at 24
hours notice, kept out of my Madras Staff Appt. for some indefinite time at a
pecuniary sacrifice of £11 a month. You talk of pisciculture paying, I have
not found it so, but I must confess to be unskilled in poUtics & my limited
ideas are unable to fathom the depths of the deep seated liberal views, with
which we in India have lately been favoured from Europe.
(23 September 1866, Q 654)
To add to the tempers aroused by Day's transfer to Kurnool, it appears that he
openly laid the blame on Shaw's Secretary, William Cornish (1828-97 ; MRCS,
St George's Hospital in 1852, thus a contemporary there of Day's - Crawford, 1930).
Cornish received the message at second hand as 'Tell Cornish he has got me sent
away to Kurnool at last' (cited in Day to Cornish, 3 September 1866, Q654).
Cornish wrote to Day from Ootacamund in astonishment that 'you attributed
your removal to Kurnool to my influence' (27 August 1866, Q 654) and he sent a
copy of his letter to Shaw. Day also managed an interview with Lord Napier,
which left him with the impression of being '. . . sent away in disgrace for some-
thing I had done . . . but what I had done I did not know . . .' (Day to Shaw,
5 September 1866, Q654). Later, when naming a new species of Nemacheilus,
Day gave it Denison's name and said '. . . under whose auspices the Indian fish-
experiment was commenced ; and during whose governorship, had he continued
in Madras, it would most assuredly have been successful' (Day, 1867a : 287). He
was probably unfair on Napier who, on receipt of Day's official account of the experi-
ment, directed 'that the thanks of Government be conveyed to Surgeon Day for his
useful and interesting report on the streams of the Neilgherry Hills, and on the
experiments which have been made under his direction, with the view of stocking
those streams with fish' (cited in Day, 1868a : 62). The Governor also endorsed
Day's recommendations for the management of the eventual hUl stream and lake
40 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
fisheries (closed seasons, etc.) and he opened the way for further transfers of fish.
In fact, Lord Napier was probably more sympathetic to Day than the latter would
care to admit, for he already knew Day's eldest brother and had, in his capacity
as Ambassador at St Petersburg in 1860-64, provided 'from time to time very
valuable information' for ^^'illiam Ansell's book on the Russian Government in
Poland (Day, W., 1867).
Dav arrived in Kurnool on 4 September (Day to Shaw, 5 September 1S66, Q 654).
In an undated draft to Shaw (Q 659) he WTOte : 'At the moment we are in a very
uncomfortable state but had we any idea how long we might anticipate being here
we could make ourselves a Uttle more comfortable . . .', which confirms that he
brought his wife with him. The worst cholera month had been June (103 dead).
By August the numbers had dropped to 13 cases (8 deaths), rising a little in Sep-
tember (29 cases, 20 deaths) but almost disappearing in October. Day decided
to make a proper investigation of this outbreak and those in preceding years and
to hazard some views on the causes, precautions and cure (notes and draft report,
Q 659). He found that only five years in the past twenty-two had been free of
this scourge ; that an average of over three hundred deaths occurred annually ;
that the army latrines were an absolute disgrace ; and that human excrement in
the streets was probably spread, together with the disease, by the trampling of
untended domestic animals. Buffaloes, he noted, were the chief scavengers of the
towm and soon 'cleared every vestige of filth' from the ditch near the jail where
the prisoners were taken twice daUy for 'the purposes of nature' ; he also noted
the proximity of lavatories to wells (Q659). Since it was another twenty years
before the causative bacillus was identified (and Robert Koch's findings even then
were received sceptically). Day was able to make httle progress beyond deploring
the lack of hygiene. As a medical student in London he must have seen some-
thing of the second great outbreak in England (1848-49, with over fifty thousand
deaths in England and Wales) and was probably aware that, at the time of the
Kurnool outbreak, the disease was once more taking its toll back home (fourteen
thousand deaths ; see Longmate, 1966) without any real advance in its prevention
and cure.*
Day wrote up his cholera notes and sent them on 29 September to his friend
and fellow surgeon William Chipperfield (1822-73) in Madras, promising a com-
plete article shortly (Chipperfield to Day, 2 October 1866, O 659) (published. Day,
1866). EarUer that year Chipperfield had told Day that he was trying to 'resusci-
tate' the Madras Quarterly Journal of Medical Science and he suggested that Day
write an article on the fish experiment for No. 20 (Chipperfield to Day, 4 August
1866, Q 654) (pubUshed, Day, 1868a). Chipperfield's ambitions for the Journal
bore fruit and he took over editorship from WilHam Cornish in 1869, issuing it
monthly (with appropriate change of title) until his death in 1873, when publication
ceased (Crawford, 1914 : 457).
• Pieter Bleeker, now retired and back in the Netherlands, was also involved with this cholera out-
break. His short pamphlet De Cholera. Wenken voor Allen of 1866 was so popular that it went to
twelve printings in a month and the drug that he recommended (essentially laudanum) became known
as 'Bleeker's drink' (see Grendel, 1967; also Bleeker's autobiography, English version in Lamme, I973)-
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 41
While Day was in Kurnool the Governor, Lord Napier, made a visit to the famine
district of Ganjam in the north of the Presidency and reported his findings in a
Minute (cutting, i September 1866, 0659), which drew scathing comments from
Day. Napier gave all his sympathy to the ryots (landed peasantry), seeming to
ignore the equally desperate phght of the landless labourers, vagrants, medicants
and small traders ; he pointed out that unfortunately human lives were more
easUy replaced than those of cattle, so that the relatively good condition of the
local cattle was something of a blessing ; and he criticized the Europeans (implying
the medical officers) for their lack of 'spontaneous zeal' in coping with the situation.
This latter was exacerbated by Napier's pronouncement on the condition of the
Civil Dispensary at Coimbatore (newspaper cutting, after 20 September 1866,
659). Incensed by all this. Day scribbled some rather uncomplimentary doggerel
in his cholera notebook (0 659) and may well have contributed to a newspaper
article taking Lord Napier to task and pointing out that, as a result of the 'niggardly
poUcy of the Madras Government', the Presidency enjoyed the 'unenviable distinc-
tion of receiving Medical Officers of the lowest possible standard . . .' (undated
newspaper cutting, 659) (see also p. 102 below).
Day was at that time waging his own battle to claim back what he had lost by
staying at Ootacamund, being the difference between his actual pay and what he
would have received if he had been in medical charge of a Native Regiment or,
after May, had he taken up his staff appointment as Medical Storekeeper at Madras.
He explained all this to Patrick Grant, saying that he had lost Rs no per month
by staying on to carry out the introduction of low-country fish, but 'I have never
objected to this. I was zealous to be successful ..." and wanted to 'complete the
work for the Government which had as I thought appreciated the trouble I had
been at . . .' (undated draft to the Collector at Coimbatore, Q 654). At the end
of November Day made a formal claim and in February the following year, perhaps
to his surprise, he received Rs 800, having received some compensation earUer
(28 February 1867, No. 163, MGPD.Proc, also Q658).
In early October Day still had no news of when he might be relieved and his
friend Chipperfield could get nothing out of Shaw 'who does not encourage ques-
tions of this kind' (Chipperfield to Day, 2 October 1866, 0659). At last, on
21 November, he was finally ordered to take up his post of Medical Store Keeper
in Madras (28 February 1867, No. 163, MGPD.Proc, in O658).
Fishery Work i86y-y4
With his return from Kurnool to Madras, Day was about to embark on the third
phase in his Indian career - that in which his fishery work was at last valued more
highly than his contribution as a surgeon. Prior to his move to Cochin in 1859,
natural history had been merely a subsidiary interest. After Cochin, and with the
production of the Fishes of Malabar and the implementation of the Nilgiri scheme.
Day's fishery interests were given grudging recognition and support, although
much depended on the Governor and his officials. In the final phase. Day was
able to realize his ambitions, largely because of new policies that aimed to develop
42 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AXD P. K. TALWAR
India's natural resources. Where in 1864 the Madras Government could turn a
deaf ear to warnings that many Indian fisheries were becoming ruined through
bad management (TIF : 79), three years later the Secretary of State felt obhged
to take action. Day might complain to Buckland of the 'deep seated Uberal views'
lately imported into India {2^ September 1866, Q654), but in the end he was to
gain from them.
MeanwhUe he carried out his duties as Medical Store Keeper and in May 1867
was also appointed Professor of Materia Medica at the Medical College in Madras
(MAL., I July 1867). The College was run and staffed by the Medical Department
and the Principal was Surgeon-Major George Smith (who had written to Day three
years before about a possible professorship - see above, p. 33). There were nine
professors, of which Chipperfield was Professor of Medicine and Clinical Medicine,
Furnell Professor of Anatomy and Ph}-siology, and Bidie Professor of Botany,
Therapeutics and, untU Day joined the staff. Materia Medica ; in that year, too,
Chipperfield became Professor of Ophthalmic Surgery. This was no doubt a diver-
sion for Day from his routine duties and it brought him at least a Uttle way towards
natural history, but his mind was firmly set on fishes.
In July Day took his annual sixty days' privilege leave and re\asited Ootacamund,
ostensibly to see the results of his fish planting experiments (Day, 1868a : 53), but
perhaps also to take Emma away from the heat of Madras prior to the birth in
October of their second daughter, Edith Mary. This time Lord Napier seems to
have shown more interest in fish, for he made arrangements for Day to transport
Uve gouramies from Madras up to Ootacamund (8 November 1867, No. 69, MGPD.
Proc). Ten fishes from the large pond in front of Government House in Madras,
originally imported from Mauritius, were dispatched in three casks to the railhead
at MettapoUiam (Price, 1908 : 36). On 27 August Day supervised their laborious
carriage by porters up to Ootacamund, four of the fishes surviving the journey (Da}',
1867a). On 2 September the fishes were ceremonially released into the Ootaca-
mund lake b}^ no less a person than Lady Napier (Price, 1908), which suggests
that the new Governor was taking a more positive view of Day's fish activities ;
no doubt seven months in Madras had enabled Day to make his knowledge and
ambitions better known.
Unfortunately, almost no manuscripts date from this period, but when Day
{Fishes of India : Preface) later stated that 'In consequence of this [Cotton's warn-
ing of the fisheries' decline] I was directed by the Government to visit the "anicuts"
or weirs of Madras Presidency . . .' one can be fairly certain from previous examples
that the Government's decision was consequent upon the strong promptings of Day
himself. In fact, the most serious warnings on the state of the fisheries seem to
have been those of Colonel George Haly (1809-71), who had noted the effects of
irrigation barrages on spawning migrations. Haly knew the fisheries well (TIF. :
310) and eventually wrote to the Secretary of State, enclosing a letter from Sir
Arthur Cotton, the contents of which were circulated to many officials, including
Day (TIF. : 63).
For Day this was the chance he had been looking for. He was the obvious person
to carry out a survey and on 11 October 1867 he sent a memorandum offering liis
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 43
services (TIF. : iii). Day said that he would 'proceed to any one of the rivers
which might be decided upon' but the offer was declined (see 17 August 1869,
No. 253, MGPD.Proc. - in O 658). For nine months he waited impatiently, but on
27 May 1868 he was finally invited to undertake the survey. Day wasted no time ;
the 'evening of June i6th found me in a railway carriage en route for Trichinopoly'
he later wrote (TIF. : iii), where he would inspect the first major river, the Coleroon
(Cauvery). By the end of September he had completed this southern survey and,
after a few days only in Madras, began his progress northwards to Ganjam, on the
boundary of Madras Presidency, and thence to Chilka lake (4 February 1869, Nos
87 and 88, MGPD.Proc, in Q 658). He returned to Madras in November and in
December and January (i86g) he made a full investigation of the Orissa fisheries
(Day, i86Se ; capture of Madras specimens 15 November 186S - Day, 1868b : 149 -
156 ; also, lists of Madras specimens, dated Madras 9 and 10 November 1S68,
BMNH.MS.Z.). Possibly during November he pressed for a more extended fishery-
survey beyond merely Madras Presidency as a result of what he had seen in Orissa.
The response seems to have been fairly quick and on 11 March 1869 a Resolution
from the Government of India ordered Day's employment 'on special duty of making
a comprehensive enquiry into the fish and fisheries of India' (quoted in GI.DARC.
Proc, 22 July 1871), the Resolution being approved on 17 June (loc. cit.). From
now on. Day was free to range throughout British India, including Burma, and
his dream of being a professional naturalist was a reality.
During his stay in Madras (November 1868 and February 1869) Day drew up
Reports for the Madras Government on the state of the fisheries to the north and
south of Madras and presumably worked on his collections. He later sent a sum-
mary of his findings on the Madras fisheries to the Madras Government (30 April
1869, No. 658, MGPD.Proc, in 658) and a report on the Orissa fisheries to the
Government of India (8 March 1869, in 658).
In early April 1869 Day was in Calcutta (draft to T. C. Jerdon, 10 April 1869,
650) and had perhaps been there for at least a month since on 3 March he was
proposed (by John Anderson, seconded by H. Blochmann) for membership of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal and was duly elected on 7 April (MS. Proc, Asiatic Soc.
Bengal). He was granted permission to continue his studies on the Society's
collections (Day, 1869b : 511), which resulted in a paper on the fishes of the Calcutta
Museum, published in three parts in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society in
1869 (11 November, 25 November, 9 December). The hbrary possessed many of
the original drawings of Hamilton-Buchanan, which Day used in his studies (e.g.
on the Orissa fishes - Day, 1869a) and he promised to devote a separate paper to
them (published two years later -Day, 1871a). However, his plans were to revisit
Burma after some thirteen years and to inspect the fisheries there. He hoped to
leave on 22 April but there were delays (letter to Jerdon, loc. cit.) and it was not
until II May that he reached Rangoon (TIF. : 254). A fortnight later he set off
for Ivloulmein but had the misfortune to be stabbed in the foot by the spine of a
large sea catfish {Arius). Unable to remove the broken spine from its point of
entry, he took his penknife, incised the sole of his foot, and drew the spine out that
way (newspaper cutting on back end-paper of LS. i ; also, his Report to the
44 P. J. P- WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Secretary, Government of India Public Works Department, Q 658).* After a short
rest in Moulmein he pushed on to Een gay gyee lake in time to witness the last
daj^ of the annual fishing occasion. By the end of August he was back in Rangoon
and from there he went to Pegu and Sittoung (mid-September). All the while
he collected specimens and much information of local interest (TIF. : 254 et seq.).
He presented his report on the freshwater fisheries on 30 September, and on the
marine fisheries on 7 December 1869 (Q566). One reaction to his report was an
irate official letter from Major-General A. Fytche, Chief Commissioner and Agent
to the Governor-General, British Burma. He disagreed with Day's suggestion to
auction fishing rights ; he found Day's description of the existing apportionment
of fishing rights, 'the letting by favour sj^stem', most objectionable ; Day's proposal
for mesh-size restriction for fishing nets was impractical ; the report contained
'many uncalled for remarks and assertions' ; and so on. The General then casti-
gated Day for apparently arriving in Burma 'firmly impressed with the idea that
he would be resisted everywhere, and by everybody . . . [he] moved over the
country without knowing a word of the language [and] was completely in the
hands of his interpreter . . .' (11 May 1S70, GI.PWD.Proc, in Q658). Day was
probably deUghted, therefore, to find a letter to one of the newspapers commenting
on the report that General Fytche was preparing a Pali Dictionary ; the writer,
calling himself Philologist, professed amazement since 'we beUeved that the General
had not even a coUoquial knowledge of the Burmese language ..." (undated
newspaper cutting, Q658).t
Day probably returned to Madras in early October 1869. In the draft of liis
letter to Jerdon (cited above), he had spoken of his plans to visit the rivers of Assam,
but this seems to have been abandoned (TIF. : 389). It may have been in this
period that his wife died, but we have no indication other than the year (DNB.)
and there is no hint of her death in the documents available (ER.). At this time
Day was trying to get permission for a visit to the .\ndaman Islands. Towards
the end of the year this was granted (13 December 1869, Q 658) and he arrived in
the Andamans on 29 December, remaining there until 24 January and collecting
a mass of data on the fish and fisheries (Day, 1870b). In his report on the fisheries
of the Andamans;!^ (February 1870, presented to the PubHc Works Department, Irri-
gation, in Q 65S) Day commented on the organization of the fisheries in a way
that seemed to throw discredit on the Superintendent of the Penal Settlement and
on the officer in charge of the fisheries (not named but by deduction Colonel Henry
Man or Captain Slaughter). Day was thanked for his report (21 February 1870,
handwritten letter, Q 658), but Colonel Man evidently objected strongly and sent
• On an earlier occasion he had been bitten by a sea snake. Sending the specimen to Wilhelm Peters
in Berlin, he wrote that it was 'the one which seized me by the heel in Orissa in 1870 and drew blood
with both fangs. The natives thought I was sure to die.' (Day to Peters, c. 13 .\pril 187S, ZMB.MS.)
t Against the cutting Day wrote 'Mr Inglis says Gen. Fytch speaks the language well, certainly he
ought as he is reputed to have kept many "walking dictionaries" the old goat.'
J Like others before him. Day was fascinated by the manners and customs of the Andaman negritos
and his report contains almost as much ethnology as it does ichthyology, largely drawn from a Mr J.
Homfray who acted as interpreter. In his classic account, Radcliffe-Brown (1922) recognized the
pioneer work of E. H. Man (.Assistant Superintendent at Port Blair) and M. V. Portman of the i88o's,
but either overlooked or dismissed Day's (Homfray's) earlier contribution. Day's account also appeared
in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society (1870c).
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 45
an explanation to the Government, which was balanced against Day's allegations
and led to the Governor-General relieving Colonel Man or Captain Slaughter of the
censure which had been passed on them (10 January 1871, handwritten letter,
Q658). The Secretary of State went further, finding the inaccuracy of Day's
hasty statements completely exposed by Colonel Man's self-vindication ; he wished
that the severe censure on the latter had been formally withdrawn (22 July 1871,
GI.DARC.Proc, Index 5, Pros. 2).
On his return from the Andamans Day seems almost immediately to have put
in an application for sick leave (at least by 21 February 1870, Q 658 ; ten months
from 19 March 1870 -LPR.). His request was granted (GI.DARC.Proc, Abstract
Tabular Statement, 8 January 1876), but if this was on account of the condition of his
foot, then it is most curious that he chose to return home, not by ship from Madras,
but by way of an overland journey to Mangalore, apparently for the purpose of
examining fish and fisheries on the way. He crossed by rail to Beypore on the
Malabar coast, then to Calicut, with a quick visit to Vithry in the Wynaad range
of hills, subsequently reporting on the fishes that he had collected (Day, 1870a).
Day stayed in England until 27 September 1S70 (GI.DARC.Proc, loc cit.) and
during that time he made two, if not five, visits to the British Museum (lists of
specimens, BMNH.MS.F.) where 'Dr. Giinther, F.R.S., at once accorded me leave
to examine the magnificent collection of fishes' (Day, 1871b : 97). This implied
warmth between Day and Giinther is probably an illusion, being intended merely
as a contrast to the earlier refusal of the Curator of the Madras Museum to allow
Day to examine the collections.* Relations between Day and Giinther were by
now rather strained, judging by the sharp jabs that Day was receiving from the
Zoological Record ; however. Day had yet to see the 1869 issue, the most critical
of all and the one that precipitated bitter exchanges in the Proceedings of the Zoo-
logical Society (see below, p. 65).
During his sojourn in England, Day may well have taken stock of his position.
Although there still remained a number of Indian fisheries which he had not yet
examined, his secondment for this work was only a temporary one and he was still
officially the Medical Store Keeper at Madras. He had some years to go before
retirement and he needed reassurance that he could continue his work on fishes.
The obvious course was to press for a more permanent appointment, possibly as
Inspector of Fisheries since little interest had been shown in his earlier suggestion
of resurrecting the post of official Naturalist. He may have hankered after a post
at the Museum in Calcutta, to which John Anderson had been appointed Curator
and later Superintendent, but the post of Assistant Curator had been filled by
James Wood-Mason the previous year and it was unlikely that any further vacancy
would arise. Day therefore pursued the idea of creating an official fishery appoint-
ment and perhaps at this time began sending memoranda and letters. It seems
very likely that he paid a personal call on the Secretary of State for India (the
* At the time Day (i868e : 2) had commented : 'The fishes of the Madras Government Central Museum
will not be included in this series of papers, as permission to examine and describe them has been re-
fused . . .' The Superintendent, Captain J. Mitchell, subsequently died of dysentery and Day's friend
George Bidie took his place.
46 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Duke of Argj-ll) to present his case. Meanwhile he returned to India to continue
his fishery work and to await a response from the Government.
WTien it came, late in July, the response was all that Day could have wished
for. The Governor-General in Council formally appointed him Inspector-General
of Indian Fisheries (GI.DARC.Proc, 22 July 1S71). When not required to be
present at the seat of Government, he was allowed 'to travel about the countrj'
and collect information on subjects connected with the Department' {Fishes of
India, Preface). The appointment was given as temporary', but it seems certain
that it was not intended to abohsh it during Day's tenure. From his substantive
appointment as Medical Store Keeper, Da\' was receiving a salary of Rs 1150 plus
Rs 200 for expenses per month. In December he was due for promotion to Surgeon-
Major at Rs 1390 plus Rs 200 for expenses. It was now decided that he should
receive Rs 1500, with Rs 5 per month for travelling, the appointment to take
effect from 9 August 1871.
For the rest of that j-ear Day examined the fisheries of northern India, first of
the Ganges, Jumna and some tributaries of the Indus (Day, i87id : 703) and, at
the end of the year, the rivers of Sind northwards to Beluchistan (see Da}', 18S0 :
224). WTien not out on expeditions. Day divided his time between Calcutta (the
seat of the Government) and Simla (the Government's summer retreat since the
days of Lord Amherst). In Calcutta, Day had the benefit of the Museum collec-
tion and the Ubrarj- of the Asiatic Society and he may have kept his own collec-
tions in Calcutta too. During 1871 he also completed his work on the Hamilton-
Buchanan drawings in the Society's Ubrarj' (Day, 1871a). Some of his books
(O 652, LS. 2) bear a printed label giving his address at this time as Oakfield,*
Simla, and he probably did most of his writing at this pleasant station ; the second
volume of his bound reprints in the Linnean Society (LS. 2) is marked in ink on
the flysheet 'Francis Day Sept. 3rd 1872 Simla'. In Calcutta his address was
4 Wood Street (Day, i87ie).
Shortly after his appointment. Day applied for three months' leave 'on private
affairs' from 15 September 1871 (GI.DARC.Proc, Abstract Tabular Statement, Sep-
tember 1871). The appUcation was refused, but Day renewed it on 11 January
the next year, asking for three months' leave of absence on what were by now 'urgent
private affairs' with effect from 15 March and this was granted (loc. cit., February
1872), but with the loss of pay. On 6 March 1872 Day was in Bombay (ZMB.MS.),
but by 18 April he was just about to sail from England back to India (BMNH.MS.Z. ;
en route 5 May - ZMB.MS.). The urgent affairs, which had brought him to England
• The name recalls a novel about India by Punjabee (pseudonym of William Delafield .\mold. brother
of the poet Mathew .Arnold) entitled Oakfield or Fellowship of the East, published in 1853. If an allusion
was intended, then it afiords an interesting clue to Day's attitudes since the book is less a novel than
a tract against the pettiness and low moral standards of the British in India. The Englishman's duty
was to 'help in the work, or try to set it going, of raising European Society, the great influence of Asia,
first from the depths of immorality, gradually to a state of Christian earnestness' and '. . . for any pur-
pose beyond protection to life and property . . an eating and drinking, money-getting community is
inefficient'. Oakfield is not included in the list of Simla houses given by Carey (1870 : 34), neither docs
it appear on the ig-sheet (24 inch/mile) Simla and Jutog Survey map made in 1873-74 (published
Calcutta, 1875), nor on the 8-sheet (16 inch/mile) Simla map of 1897 (lOR. F.II 23 and 20). This
further suggests that the name OakHeld was given by Day, presumably to an existing house.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-18S9) 47
for these short weeks, were evidently his marriage to Emily Sheepshanks (see below,
P- 95).
By 1873, Day had covered almost all the inland waters of India and Burma and
he drew up an official report (Day, 1873a), in which he summarized his previous
account of the freshwater fishes and fisheries (Day, i87ie), as well as his eight
earUer reports (south of Madras, north of Madras, Orissa and lower Bengal, Burma,
Andamans, North-west Provinces, Punjab and Sind). In the same year he also
wrote a paper on the marine fishes of India and Burma (Day, 1873b). From these
reports one can judge the enormous amount of travelling that Day had to under-
take at a time when the railway network was still poorly developed and much of
his exploration had to be on horseback, on foot or by boat.
Day's work on the fisheries, and the recommendations that he proposed (fish
ladders, conservation, etc.) met with some hostility, not so much from those who
might lose by any new legislation, as by those who seem to have begrudged Day's
opportunities. A short article in the Pioneer (December 1871) noted Day's acti-
vities in Sind and commented : 'If the Inspector General of sticklebacks has gone
there to make collections for the Museum, we congratulate the country on the
expedition ; but if he has gone to examine and report upon the "wholesale
destruction" which it is pretended is going on, we had rather Dr Day had been
less expensively employed' ; local canal officers could do the job equally well
(Q 658). Colonel Haly, who had to some extent paved the way to Day's appoint-
ment by writing on the state of Indian fisheries in 1866, now took Day to task
over his Burma trip. The Colonel could see no reason for Day's investigation
since there was no part of the Empire 'where piscatory nature can be better left
to its natural resources' (2 July 1869, The Overland Mail, cutting in O 658). Haly
was obviously piqued that 'it may come to pass that the credit for improvements
[to fisheries] which I have proposed and advocated be given to another . . .',
although he claimed he would rejoice at any benefits accruing to India (his letter,
10 September 1870, to The Homeward Mail, cutting in 658).
Day was by now 43, remarried and employed in exactly the kind of work he
had always wanted. The Government perhaps reasonably expected that he would
now settle down in his new post and that the torrent of memoranda and the prece-
dents that they created would cease. Day, however, had conceived a further
scheme and when the time was ripe would begin again the round of lobbying and
persuasive letters that had succeeded so well in the past. He had decided to write
a definitive work on Indian fishes. Although he continued with his fishery investi-
gations for a further two years, visiting almost every part of India, the 'book' was
uppermost in his mind and the collections that he made were to form the basis
of it.
The Fishes of India i8y4-j8
The first intimation of Day's intention to produce the Fishes of India comes in
a draft of a letter to Thomas Jerdon (1811-72), fellow surgeon, naturalist and
author of handbooks on Indian mammals and birds. Jerdon had already written
on the freshwater fishes of southern India and he had produced a catalogue of
48 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
fishes (Jerdon, 1848-49, 185 1). In 1865, Day believed that Jerdon's catalogue
would be expanded 'in his forthcoming work on the "Fishes of India" ' (FM.,
Introduction : xxx). Four years later, however, Jerdon had evidently given up
authorship in favour of Day since the latter wrote to him from Calcutta to say
that.
As to my work on the fishes of India I shall not attempt to pubUsh it before
I leave the service under two years from this time if my 10 months of service
in the hills is not taken off, anyhow not much above 2i years. The book will
I think be in (4) four volumes the size the same as your manuals but with the
difference I intend giving a copperplate illustration of one of each genus up
to 100 genera or thereabouts. I send a copy of one plate (first proof) for
you as a sample, about 40 are done. ... I am going to so much trouble
that I could not associate anyone with myself in the publication. ... I
could not publish any portion of my fishes of India [until the Reports on
fish and fisheries were completed].
(lo April 1869, O 650)
This letter throws a great deal of light on the origins of the Fishes of India. The
project had e\idently been in Day's mind for some time and he had gone so far as
to produce 40 of the plates. Possibly, these were taken from the Fishes of Malabar
(32 fishes), together vdth others that he had had done in England by other printers,
since it seems unlikely that he had managed to fill 40 plates with the number of
figures that crowd each plate of the Fishes of India. In one of the bound volumes
of Day's reprints (Eg. 14) Day not only included plates from the Fishes of Malabar
(18 species, of which 12 are coloured), but the chromoUth of Serranus bontoo (see
above, p. 26) and 5 unpubUshed figures (i coloured, Rasbora neilgherriensis) which
seem to have been intended for his papers on Nilgiri and Madras fishes (Day,
1867a, b, 1868c). This would bring the total to 38 and perhaps there were one
or two further drawings in preparation. Day drew the fishes on 42 of the plates
for the Fishes of India, but they were engraved in England and there is no indica-
tion that he ever had plates made for him in India.
Day was becoming increasingly confident in his knowledge of Indian fishes. He
had travelled through much of the country and had unlimited opportunities for
visiting the rest. He had amassed a large collection, of which only a small part
had been sent to the British Museum. Only two years after the trout experiment
he issued a catalogue of Indian freshwater fishes (Day, i868e, 1869c) and in 1871
he wrote an official report on the freshwater fishes and their fisheries, enlarging on
it and including Burma two years later (Day, 1871c, 1873a). By now he was ready
to issue a report on the marine fishes and their fisheries (Day, 1873b) and it was
an interleaved copy of this paper (Eg. 11) that served him as a basis for compiling
the Fishes of India. On the first spare page of this copy he wrote.
This Ust of the sea fishes known in India was drawn up in 1873. Since that
period a revision of my collection, inspection of fishes in the B.M., assistance
from Bleeker, Schlegel, Le Vaillant, Sauvage, Peters & Hubrecht has largely
increased the Ust, which has been also augmented by the gift of Sir W. EUiot's
FRANCIS DAY (1S29-1889) 49
drawings & some of Jerdon's specimens. The 'Fishes of India' however must
necessarily be far from complete - The two great regions from which species
unrecorded in this work wiU be probably discovered are Hill ranges and marine
& estuarv forms.
(Eg. II)
Day anticipated retiring in 187 1 or 1872, but his calculations seem to have gone
somewhat awry, since he did not retire until November 1876, nearly five years
after the date anticipated in his letter to Jerdon. This probably determined him
not to wait but to begin work on the Fishes of India whUe still in Government service.
He must have been aware that, however much he might argue with Giinther from
a personal knowledge of Indian fishes, a work of the scope and standard that he
was planning could not hope to escape criticism if it were not also based on the
British Museum collections. His decision to return to England to write the book
had already been taken during his leave of 1872. In a letter to von Martens dated
5 May 1872, and written on board ship as he returned to India, he spoke of liis 'rare
opportunity of collecting fish' and of his 'hope next year to return to England for
the purpose of compihng a Manual of the Fishes of India' (ZMB.MS.).
In anticipation of his return to England, Day shipped his collections home, a
decision he had apparently taken during his leave of 1872 since he wrote to von
Martens in Berlin that 'my collections go to Europe so I cannot forward them on
to Berlin until my return to England' (5 May 1872, ZMB.MS.). By October 1873
his fishes were already in England and he recorded his hope 'shortly to commence
a thorough re-examination of my collection of Indian fishes now in England (num-
bering about 12000 specimens in spirit, besides skins) . . .' (Day, 18736 : 747).
There is no indication of where he stored this huge collection and one would imagine
that he would have been anxious to have seen it on arrival. His last opportunity
would have been in 1872 when he rushed home to marry Emily Sheepshanks, but
his appUcation for that leave was made as far back as September 1871 and it seems
unlikely that he would have parted with his reference collection so early. Possibly
Brisbane NeUl supervised the storage of it in Day's absence.
Day may well have taken the opportunity of sounding out the Secretary of State
whUe he was in England, but it was not until the latter part of 1873 that he drew
up a memorandum to the Government of India. The proposal that was forwarded
to the Secretary of State (30 October 1873, GI.DARC.Proc.) outUned the following
scheme.
1. From I May 1874 Day's salary would be stopped. Instead, he would be granted
two years' leave of absence (to count as service in India) at a monthly salary of
Rs 1000, but he would have to meet the cost of travel to England (£64 fide
Board of Kev^nue - Proceedings, 4 June 1866, Q658).
2. Day must compile in these two years 'a complete Manual of the freshwater and
sea-fishes of the Indian Empire and Ceylon, fully illustrated'.
3. The first volume should be issued 'during this period, the second as soon after-
wards as practicable ; Government subscribing to 250 copies of the manual at
Rs 50 a copy . . .'
50 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P K. TALWAR
Financially, the terms do not seem to have been too generous, Day losing Rs 500
a month and being faced wth the expense of shipping home his huge collection
and renting a house. However, the scheme was approved by the Secretary of
State and by Jlay 1874 Day was in England (17 July iSSg, CE.) and in June was
settled in Hartland House, King's Road, Richmond (24 June 1874, BMNH.MS.Z.).
His chief problems were now to compare his material with that in the British
Museum and to arrange for the plates for the book to be made.
At this time the Departments of Natural Historj' were still housed within the
British Museum building in Bloomsbury, although plans for the new natural historj'
museum at South Kensington (the present building) had been approved and con-
struction had started the previous year (Munro, 1931). The state of the fish collec-
tions, in spite of Giinther's work of arranging and cataloguing, was if anything
worse than on Day's previous visits because of overcrowding. The spirit collec-
tions, chiefly comprising those of fish, reptiles and amphibians, were relegated to
the Spirit Room in the basement of the east wing where 'conditions of light and
temperature were most suitable for the preservation of the specimens, but less so
for the comfort and health of the persons compelled to work in that locality . . .
the stone flags of the floor were at times covered with damp or water, causing the
wood-work of the bottom of the cases to rot, and destroying unfortunately many
of the labels on the bottles . . .' (Gxinther, 1912 : 5). The Zoology Department
accommodation, on the other hand, was in the semi-basement of the north-west
comer of the building. A '\isitor's impression' was given by Philip Sclater (1877).*
. . . descending (with care) a flight of darkened steps, he will find himself in
the cellar, which has for many years constituted the workshop of our national
zoologists. Two small studies partitioned off to the left are assigned to the
keeper of the department and his assistant. The remaining naturalists are
herded together in one apartment commonly called the 'Insect-room', along
with artists, messengers, and servants. Into this room is shewn everj'body
who has business in the Zoological Department of the British Museum, whether
he comes as a student to examine the collections, or as a tradesman to settle
an account. . . . Xo hghts are allowed, and when the fogs of winter set in,
the obscurity is such that it is difficult to see any object requiring minute
examination.
Bowdler Sharpe, who joined the Department in 1S72, recalled 'the gloom of
this underground dungeon' and also commented on the difficulty that visitors had
in examining the material, even a written application two or three days before-
hand not guaranteeing that the curator in question would be available to bring
out the specimens (Sharpe, 1906 : 84). Thus, Day found that he had to write to
Giinther forty-eight hours in advance, giving a list of exactly the material he wanted
to see, deduced from Giinther's Catalogue of Fishes, a stricture that Day was to
• Secretary of the Zoological Society for over forty years, Sclater held an important place in British
zoology (see the memoire by Goode, 1896: also Who's Who, 1905: 1434). Bowdler Sharpe (1906)
remembered his extreme kindness and encouragement to a young man entering on a scientific career,
but Giinther clashed with him several times (see p. 105 below) and firmly squashed his idea to sandwich
student rooms between galleries in the new Museum at South Kensington, the specimens in the show
cases to be accessible from the back as well as from the front (Gunther, 1975 : 346).
FRANCIS DAY (1829-18S9) 51
question rather pointedly two years later (Day to Giinther, 5 December 1876,
BMNH.MS.Z.), but which he failed to annul. The battles that arose over ques-
tions of access to the collections formed an unpleasant background to the scientific
feud conducted by Giinther and Day in various journals (see p. 69).
On Day's previous visits to the Museum, Giinther had been either temporarily
employed or, after 1862, had been Senior Assistant to the Keeper, J. E. Gray.
Giinther's position at the time is emphasized in a letter written by Neill to Day
in 1866, saying that he had called on Gray 'who at once said "Giinther has nothing
to do with buying specimens, it is my business" so I presume they are no more
friendly than before' (Neill to Day, 8 June 1866, Q654). In May 1S69 Gray
suffered a stroke, from which he never recovered the use of his right arm and leg.
To assist Gray in his administrative duties, the post of Assistant Keeper was
created, taken first by his brother G. R. Gray until his death in 1872, and then by
Giinther. By the middle of 1874, when Day arrived in England, J. E. Gray's
health was precarious and in December of that year he was compelled to resign
after fifty years with the British Museum. In February 1S75 Giinther was appointed
Keeper and for the next fifteen years he was able to exercise virtually complete
control over Day's access to the British Museum collections.
For a year and a half Day lived at Richmond and, judging by the requests that
survive (BMNH.MS.Z.), applied to examine British Museum material at least once
a week. From these lists it is possible to foUow very closely his progress with
the book. During this time he corresponded with workers abroad and he paid
visits to Berlin and Paris (January/February 1875) and to The Hague, Leiden,
Berlin and Paris (May /June 1875), where he met Peters, Vaillant, Sauvage, Bleeker,
Schlegel, Hubrecht and many others (letters Day to Peters, 17 January and c.
8 February 1874 ; 4 May and 26 June 1875, ZMB.MS. ; letter Day to Leon Vaillant,
I March 1875, MNHN.MS.). According to a letter to Herman Schlegel, Day visited
Leiden at least once a year from 1874 to 1879 (18 February 1879, RMNH.MS.).
From these visits he concluded that the British Museum was unique in its obstruc-
tive attitude to visitors. But however large and accessible other museums might
be, the finest collection of fishes from India, apart from Day's ow:i material, was
that at the British Museum and Day was obliged to swallow his pride and to write
his weekly note to Giinther beginning 'Sir, I should feel much obliged by being
allowed to see . . .' (BMNH.MS.Z.).
Towards the end of 1875 Day decided that his Richmond house was too cramped
and by November he had taken Kenilworth House at Pittville, on the outskirts
of Cheltenham (Day to Peters, 28 November 1875, ZMB.MS.). Overlooking
pleasant lawns and clusters of trees, Kenilworth House is still the most imposing
of a row of large, detached and pretentious Victorian mansions once tenanted in
their retirement by the more wealthy of the professional classes. In February
the following year Day left Hartland House and moved his huge collections to his
new home in Cheltenham, a town that he already knew well from his stay in 1864 -
65. Although this now meant a four-hour train journey to London, his visits to
the British Museum were no less frequent, to judge from his applications to Giinther
(BMNH.MS.Z.).
52 p. J. V. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
The writing of the book was progressing fairly well. By August 1875 the first
part was printed and a copy had been sent to India through the India Office
(8 January 1876, GI.DARC.Proc.)- By January 1876 Part 2 was virtually
complete and Day confidently expected its publication by the agreed date, the
end of April (loc. cit.). His contract had been to complete the writing of the
book in two years from i May 1874, when he would then be required to return to
India, the second volume to be issued 'as soon afterwards as practicable' (see
above). As with the Fishes of Malabar, however, it was the plates that held up the
publication.
Day's original plan had been to illustrate the book with woodcuts, which he
estimated would cost £800, but 'the engraver . . . failed to keep his engagement'
so Day sought the services of George Henry Ford (1809-76) (8 January 1876,
GI.DARC.Proc), perhaps the most talented of all natural histor}' artists then in
London ; his ability to foreshorten the colour-markings on a coiled snake drew all
of John Ruskin's admiration (Gunther, 1930). Ford had been associated with the
British Museum \irtually since his arrival in London from South Africa where he
had been employed as artist for Andrew Smith's Illustrations of the zoology of South
Africa (1838-47). He had worked under Gray but later came to illustrate much
of Giinther's work, including The reptiles of British India (1864), The fishes of
Zanzibar (1867), Die Fische der Siidsee (1873 et seq.) and many short papers in the
Proceedings of the Zoological Society. By 1874, Ford had been illustrating works
for the British Museum for over thirty-five years and Giinther clearly believed that
he had a rightful monopoly on Ford's time.
How Day managed to steal Ford's services from under Giinther's watchful eye
remains a mystery ; certainly Day's action did not go uncontested (see p. 79
below). Even Giinther's brother-in-law, William M'Intosh, felt obUged to plead
the loss in marriage of his artistic sister as grounds for begging the temporary
release of Ford to illustrate his work on nemerteans and polychaetes (Gunther,
1973). By November 1874, however. Day had made a firm proposition to Ford
and the latter had promised that he would 'produce the 40 plates by March ne.xt,
also the second 40 by the time mentioned, September 1875. I have no doubt, if
you supply me with the material, that I shall be enabled to complete the plates for
your work by the time specified'. (8 January 1876, GI.DARC.Proc.) Ford had
originally been engaged to draw about eight hundred species (for £1900), but Day
later increased this to eleven hundred species (for £2400). The Government of
India was no doubt alarmed by this news. In the original Minute Paper drawing
up the terms of Day's employment on the book, the size of the proposed expendi-
ture, as well as the cost of Day's fishery work during the previous three years (£5850,
including salary), had been carefuUy spelt out ; his salary for two years would be
;f2400 and the book would cost the Government £1250, making a grand total of
£9500 since Day's appointment as Inspector-General of Fisheries (24 November
1873, RDL). The money for the book (£1250) was e\idently the cost of 250 copies
at Rs 50 each, but it is not clear whether some or all of this was available to Day
in advance for the plates. Certainly, it would not be enough and Day sought
other means of raising monej'.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 53
In November 1874, Day wrote to Peters to say that he hoped to be able to tell
him what would be done with his collections, but,
As yet I have had no answer from the India Office, an Official has been sent
down to see what I have, but until I hear definitely I can do nothing with the
Reptiles and Crustacea ... I will write again as soon as I know what the
Indian Govt, decide upon.
(23 November 1S74, ZMB.MS.)
Day had apparently offered to sell to the India Office a collection of 4000 fishes
for exhibition in the new India Museum (opened at South Kensington the following
year) and for a while this offer seems to have been accepted (inferred from Minute
Paper No. 910, 24 December 1S75, SCHC). However, this scheme did not succeed
and in December 1875 Day offered a second and smaller collection, which was
again turned down (Minute Paper No. 910, loc. cit. ; see below, p. 120). The Secre-
tary of State for India 'considered that neither the expense of the bottles in which
to exhibit them, nor of spirit for their preservation, could be rightly debited to
the resources of India' (Anon., 1876 : 334). On reflection, the Secretary of State
may have realized that, if he were to refuse the money for the extra plates - and
the Revenue Department would almost certainly insist on this - then he must
also refuse Day's roundabout method of making the Government of India subsi-
dize the plates through the purchase of the specimens.
Day next tried to interest the British Museum, and in an undated draft to Richard
Owen at the British Museum (possibly dating from late 1875, 650) Day stated:
'As I propose having my Fishes of India coloured but object to expending any more
private funds on the work I propose parting with my ist duplicate collection for
that purpose. Prior to offering out of the country I enclose you a list with request.
Should the Trustees of the B.M. wish to obtain them they may do so for ^^750 which
offer unless accepted within a month must be understood to be withdrawn.' The
offer was not accepted. Owen would naturally have consulted with Gunthcr and
since a number of substantial collections were purchased in this period, for example
from the Godeffroy Museum in 1873 and 1877, the lack of interest on this occasion
was probably not due to lack of funds.*
As might be expected, however. Day already had yet another alternative. Ac-
cording to a report in Nature (Anon., 1876 : 334), an artist called Wood was said
to have offered to produce the 30 extra plates for the Fishes of India, bringing the
total from 160 to igo plates or about 1140 figures, 'in exchange for the type collec-
tion, numbering about 1,200 species. . .' Since no artist would seriously consider
cluttering his house with 1200 bottles of alcoholic fish specimens, it was clear that
sale of the specimens at some future date was anticipated.
In fact, this benevolent artist was not a Mr Wood - presumably a misreading of
Day's handwriting - but none other than Day's artist George Ford. To Peters,
Day explained that 'Ford has taken my collection for extra plates so now I shall
* Some ;^i2oo, or almost half the budget for the Zoology Department, was allocated to the purchase
of specimens (but for books, only £25 !) in 1S75 and at least the two succeeding years (BMNH.MS.Doc,
I : 61. 99, 202).
54 P J P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
have at least 190 plates' (28 November 1875, ZMB.MS.). In a note in one of his
bound series of reprints (Eg. 11), Day spoke of the sequel to this affair.
Mr Ford in order to increase the usefulness of this work proposed augmenting
the figures by giving 30 additional plates for the type collection. Dr Anderson
the head of the Indian Museum at Calcutta secured it for that institution bj'
paj^ng for the same. But Mr Ford took the risk without ascertaining if there
was a market.
Shortly after his letters to Peters, Day was able to make a proposition to John
Anderson (see p. 133 below), and in Nature it was stated that the Calcutta museum
'hearing of this arrangement [between Day and the artist] proposed to the Trustees
[that they] secure it on these terms. . .'. It was left to the reader (and one sees
Day's hand behind this) to decide whether this collection would not have been
better placed in the British Museum (Anon., 1876 : 334).
Having successfully raised money for the extra plates. Day could now conclude
the work, but further difficulties arose. In August 1875, shortly after beginning
the plates. Ford's health decUned and the work fell seriously behind schedule (Day
to Peters, 22 August 1875, ZMB.MS.). Ford wrote to Day in November 1875
explaining the position and regretting that he could not possibly complete the
160 plates before the end of 1876 (8 January 1S76, GI.DARC.Proc). Reasonably
enough Day WTOte to the Secretary to the Government of India for an extension
to his period of special duty in England on the grounds that his presence was
required to see the plates to completion ; further, if he left now 'Ford will be unable
to continue the plates, and his four artists discharged, when they will doubtless
be taken by others [by this he must surely have meant Giinther]' (loc. cit.).
As in 1864, Day had again got himself comfortably settled in Cheltenham and
was no doubt reluctant to return to India at a time when his work was in full swing.
He was entitled to retire in May 1876 on a pension of £220 per year, but an extension
of his special duty would require a further five and a half months in India to qualify
for more furlough ; could he not set this off against the interruption in his sick
leave of 1870 when he had been recalled earlier than expected? (8 January 1876,
GI.DARC.Proc). His plea was granted the following month and the Governor-
General allowed an extension for six months from i May (18 February 1876, loc.
cit.). Day eventually retiring in November 1876.
The further progress of the book can be seen from the dates of publication given
in a footnote in the Preface (see also Prashad, 1929).* Part 2 appeared in August
1876, part 3 exactly a year later, and part 4 is dated i December 187S. Ford's
health continued to decline and he died in July 1876, having drawn almost all of
* The dating of Day's Fishes of India, from the preface and from Prashad (1929) and Menon & Rao
(1974), is as follows:
Parti
Part II
Part III
Part IV
pp. 1-168 pis 1-40
pp. 169-368 PIS41-7S
PP- 369-552 pis 79-133
pp. i-xx {i.e. Preface,
Introduction, Index),
Aug. 1875
Aug. 1876
Aug. 1877
Suppl.
PP- 553-778 pis 134-195
pp. 779-816 7 text-figs
I Dec. 1878
Oct. 1888
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 55
the plates for the first two parts of the book and a few of those for the third. Day
engaged other artists and, with more time at his disposal now that the deadline
for part I had been met, drew 42 of the plates himself and 6 in collaboration with
Suzini. The other plates were drawn by Achilles (32)* and a few by R. Mintern.
Day collaborated with Suzini with the lithography of two plates, but the remainder
were undertaken by Achilles, Suzini, G. L. Greisbach and R. Mintern. Eleven of
the plates were printed by the firm of Martin & Hood, but all the others were done
by Mintern Brothers of Hard Street, Bloomsbury (the firm to which Ford had been
attached during his latter years).
When Day took over the plates for the second two parts of the book, he used
his interleaved and annotated copy of the report on Indian marine fishes (Eg. 11)
to keep a record of when the plates went to press. The dates and numbers run
from 14 January 1877 to a date after 11 September 1878, and from Plate 79 to
Plate 183. Towards the end of this interleaved book Day entered in the contents
of each plate, made many alterations to plate numbers to accommodate the extra
30 plates, and gave the name of the artist. Even more important, however, he
gave details of the figured specimens. In many cases dorsal and anal finray counts
are given, as well as horizontal and oblique scale rows and (for clupeoids) scute
numbers. Large fishes are marked 'to be 5J inches' while small fishes were to be
'full size'. In a few instances a name has been deleted and another substituted.
In a letter to Peters, Day said that he did not intend producing a coloured edition
'but as soon as the plain one is out I propose having 20 copies coloured and allowing
Quaritch to dispose of a few, but this cannot be done for 3 or 4 years' (28 November
1875, ZMB.MS.). This might explain a cryptic note on the flysheet of the inter-
leaved reprint (Eg. 11) cited above, in which Day wrote '600 blacks 50 grays', the
less heavily printed (grey) plates perhaps being those intended for colouring. How-
ever, we have not found any record of such coloured copies. With over a thousand
figures to colour, the work and expense would have been enormous and Day prob-
ably never had time to undertake or supervise it. A single bound volume contain-
ing only the plates has been seen by one of us (P. J. P. W.). It is titled One hundred
and ninety-eight plates to illustrate Francis Day's work on the Fishes of India i88g,
and on the verso is 'London, G. Norman and Son, Printers, Floral Street, Covent
Garden, W.C Inside was a photograph of a wedding party of about the 1890s,
from a Rangoon studio, but none of the names pencilled on the back related to
the known friends of Day (we are indebted to Mr Roger Lubbock for bringing this
volume to our attention). Possibly these were plates set aside by Day for a coloured
edition and bound up by the printer when the idea was abandoned. However,
the plates are not noticeably lighter than those in normal copies.
In the first volume of his annotated and interleaved copy of the Fishes of India
(Eg. 12), Day dated the title page 'August 25th 1875' and this may well be the
actual publication date. In a letter to Bleeker dated 8 August 1875 he said that
* The only reference that we have to Achilles is a short letter in one of Day's bound series of reprints
(Q 481). Writing from 37 Alexandra Road. Sandy Lane. Kew. on 19 August (or July) 1877, he signs
himself Chs .-Vchilles and asks Day to bring more specimens up to London for the next plate. Apart
from a tendency to ruin specimens {see p. 79), he seems to have been a good draughtsman.
56 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AXD P. K. TALWAR
he hoped to send 'next week Pt i of my Fishes of India' (RMNH.MS.) ; a note
at the top of the letter shows that Bleeker replied on 13 September and in Daj^'s
next letter to Bleeker {17 September) the latter is thanked for his remarks on the
book. He had earher wTitten to Peters saying, 'I hope now to finish the printing
of the first J of my book by the end of July . . .' (26 June 1875, ZMB.MS.) and on
22 August he wrote to say that he had ordered the book to be sent 'which I hope
you have received before now' (ZMB.MS.). Referring to Part 2, Day wrote to
Bleeker on 3 August 1876 saving, 'I have done myself the pleasure of sending the
second part of my Fishes of India for your acceptance. Whilst doing so permit
me again to thank you for the great assistance you have given me.' (RMNH.MS.)
He also wTote on the same day in a similar vein to Peters (ZMB.MS.). Unfortu-
nately, Part 3 cannot be dated from these letters, although Day sent pages 369-376
and the plates (except Plate 83, which was not yet printed) to Bleeker on 12 January
1877 ; these however, would have been proofs since Day did not then anticipate
pubhcation until July (RMNH.MS.). For the first part of the book Day had sent
drawings and descriptions of MugiUdae and also the plates for the Gobiidae to
Bleeker asking him to check the names 'prior to my having the names put on them'
(8 August and 17 September 1S75, RMNH.MS.) and Bleeker probably checked
other difficult groups subsequently.
On the flysheet of the first interleaved and annotated volume Day wrote 'Free
list' and noted ten copies set aside for 'Mr Hume, Thomas, Peters, Milne Edwards,
General Strachey, Dr Bleeker, Sir B Ellis, Mr NeiU, Sir W EUiott, Self ; beside
this is another Ust, headed 'Plates', giving the names 'Watson, Waring, Pearse,
[Abercrombie ?], Le Blanc, Le Vaillant, Sauvage, Balfour, Keats, Bidie, Dobson'.
Many of these had given him help with the book in one way or another ; in addition,
Edward Waring was both a medical colleague and married to Day's half-sister
Carohne, while A. Le Blanc was probably a cousin on his mother's side and was
later Honorary Treasurer of the Cheltenham Natural Science Society at a time
when Day was President.
Myers (1971), in a discussion of regional monographs on extra-European fishes,
chose as the great era of this form of ichthyology the half-century 1820-70, arguing
that the final volume of Giinther's Catalogue in 1870 ushered in the early modern
period of taxonomic ichthyology. However, Da3''s Fishes of India (1875-78) was
surely a regional monograph par excellence and in its concept and execution should
be placed in the period that produced Poey's works on Cuban fishes, Klunzinger's
Red Sea study, Plav'fair and Giinther's book on Zanzibar fishes and Bleeker's Atlas.
As Myers points out, all these works suffer from the same defect - a failure to
comprehend the true richness of their particular ichthyofaunas. Nonetheless,
Day's Fishes of India is a monumental work. Whatever quibbles Giinther may
have had v\ith Day's taxonomy, the Fishes of India is more than just a catalogue
with descriptions and figures. Unhke Giinther's Catalogue, Boulenger's Catalogue
of African freshwater fishes and several others of this period, it was written b\' a
man with a verj' extensive knowledge of the biology of the fishes and of the role
that they played in native fisheries. Day, in fact, was exceptional in the way
that he combined field studies with museum work and covered such a vast
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 57
geographical as well as ichthyological territory. The book has never been superseded
by anything of such scope, and although the nomenclature and synonymies have
frequently been modified by more recent work, it is still used and valued for its
descriptions, its figures and its biological data.
Final years
Since the emphasis in the present study is on Day's Indian career and collections,
his later work on European fishes will be treated more briefly, except where this
has relevance to the quarrel with Giinther and thus to the disposal of Day's collec-
tions.
With the pubUcation of the final part of his Fishes of India at the end of 1878,
Day became increasingly involved with British fishes and by November of the
following year was predicting to Peters the appearance in December of the first
part of Ids Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland (8 November 1880, ZMB.MS.). How-
ever, he had another preoccupation, for he was 'tired of Cheltenham and a country
residence, being so far from Museums &c.' (Day to Peters, 10 June 1880, ZMB.MS.)
and was tr3dng in every way possible to succeed his old friend Frank Buckland as
Inspector of Fisheries. At that time two Inspectorships existed, one held by
Spencer Walpole and the other by Buckland. In 1878 the two men had been
commissioned to report on the sea fisheries of England and Wales, but by Sep-
tember 1879, when the Report was presented, Buckland was already a sick man
(Burgess, 1967 : 172). In April the following year Day wrote to Peters of Buck-
land's illness, from which there now seemed no chance for recovery, and he con-
fided : 'I should like his appointment & had the conservatives remained in office
should probably have obtained it - now all is change and I have to watch everyone
so closely that I cannot get away [to Berhn as promised]' (11 April 1880, ZMB.MS.).
In June Day made the Berlin visit, but on his return he found that, as he had
feared, 'matters were not looking promising as to my chance of succeeding Buck-
land' and worse 'we have traced the cause, my old friend Giinther is trying all he
possibly can to get in a protege of his own, whose name I have not yet obtained'
(10 June 1880, ZMB.MS.). The solution, thought Day, would be a recommendation
from Peters.
My friends tell me that it would be a matter of extreme importance could I
obtain from you a testimonial as to your belief in my capacity to undertake
the administration of fisheries should such an appointment be vacant - That
your opinion as both a scientific ichthyologist and a practical worker in the
field would probably outweigh Gunther.
(10 June 1880, ZMB.MS.)
Day wrote this with 'great hesitation', fearing his request might not meet with
Peters' approval, but the latter compUed (12 June 1880, rough draft, mostly in
German, ZMB.MS.) and Day wrote in gratitude for the testimonial 'which I shall
never part with. . . . Even should I be so unfortunate as not to obtain the
vacancy when it occurs such letters as yours will go far to reconcile me to the loss
and to spur me on to try to obtain more knowledge than I now possess on the subject
58 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
of Fish and Fisheries.' (17 June 1880, ZMB.MS.) By November the vacancy
still had not been advertised. Buckland, wrote Day, seems a little better 'but it
cannot last - I personally wish him well in every way but on a vacancy occurring
shall at once put in an application for it, and though a very strong party exists
to put in a younger man I believe {unless politics interferes) that my name stands
first on the list' (Day to Peters, 8 November 1880, ZMB.MS.).
Buckland died on 19 December and by late January his successor was appointed.
In fact, age played no part, nor perhaps politics, and the choice seems virtually
to have been made only very shortly after Buckland's death (Burgess, 1967 : 213).
To Peters, Day wrote simply : 'Huxley is put in - comment is unnecessary', adding
rather sadly 'At present I do not quite see what is best to be done all my plans
are upset ... it is unlikely that I can do so much as I had hoped to have accom-
plished in European ichthyology.' (19 January 1881, ZMB.MS.)
There is no doubt that Day would have brought to the Inspectorship qualities
of which Buckland would ha\'e approved and which Huxley lacked. In 1885 a
post of Inspector was again vacant, but again Day was disappointed. This time
it was given to Arthur Berrington, an appointment which The Field thought would
be 'received with a feeUng of passing surprise by the many who had taken it for
granted that Mr Francis Day, or some of the fourteen or fifteen candidates who
have been talked about, would have been selected' (31 October 1885, cutting in
Q 653, vol. I).
Day's fears for his contribution to British ichthyologj' were unwarranted, how-
ever. Although, with his great energy, Day might well have succeeded in com-
bining fishery work with the writing of his book on British fishes, the latter is even
today a worthy contribution from a man who had already devoted more than
half his career to Indian fishes. 'As a text book for the naturahst interested in
British fishes it is still without peer . . .' commented a recent ichthyologist
(WTieeler, 1966).
Day's interest in Indian fishes continued, however, and the numerous annota-
tions in his reprints show that he kept abreast of the literature. His interleaved
copy of the Fishes of India, bound in four volumes (Eg. 12), acted as a compendium
of his later additions and he marked the flysheet 'This copy is annotated for a
second edition - F Day'. In December 1887 he told Eduard von Martens at the
Berlin Museum that 'I am engaged on a revision of my "Fishes of India" . . .'
(20 December 1887, ZMB.MS.). He made a number of visits to the British Museum,
of which one on 19 January 1888 is recorded (Boulenger to Day, 21 January 1888,
and annotation on p. 22 of first interleaved volume, Eg. 12). By October, his
Supplement to the Fishes of India was published, being chiefly additions and correc-
tion to the synonymies, but including also descriptions of fifteen new species. By
this time he had seen the descriptions and drawings of Burmese fishes made by
Colonel TickeU (see p. 112) and seven of his new species and one new genus were
based on Tickell's unpubUshed work. The Supplement was in part the result of a
request that Day condense his Fishes of India to form the two fish volumes in the
series The fauna of British India including Ceylon and Burma (Day, 1889). Day
may well have hoped to produce a second edition of the Fishes of India, but time
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 59
was against him. He lived long enough to correct half the proofs of the first volume
of the Fauna, which was published the month that he died, the second volume
appearing later that year (Introduction to volume i, Preface to volume 2).
Yet another link with India was Day's work as Commissioner for the Indian
Department at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883 (see p.
81). For his contributions Day gained three gold medals and £100 prize money
for his essay on British commercial sea fishes (Day, 1884c ; also two other essays
- Day, i884d, e). He also earned glowing praise from the Chairman of the Execu-
tive Committee in a letter to the Secretary of State for India and two years later
he was honoured with the decoration Companion of the Indian Empire (17 July
1889, CE.).
Day had already participated in four previous fishery exhibitions (Paris, 1875 ;
Berhn, 1880, bronze medal ; Norwich, 1881, silver medal ; and Edinburgh, 1882,
gold and silver medals) and his interest in European as well as Indian fisheries is
shown by articles in Land and Water, essays for exhibitions and so on (some cuttings
and proofs in Cheltenham MSS. ; see also bibUography in Dean, 1916). He also
made a particular study of salmonid fishes, using the stables at the back of his
house for rearing experiments (17 July 1889, CE.), and in 1887 published the British
and Irish Salmonidae (which contained a great deal of his own original work, much
of it being carried out at the fish farm of his friend Sir James Maitland at Howieton,
near Stirling). In 1872 he was awarded a silver medal by the Societe d'Acclimata-
tion of France in recognition of his efforts to plant trout in India. He was also
honoured with the Cross of the Crown of Italy and was elected Honorary Member
of the Deutscher Fischerei-Verein and the American Fisheries Society.
Reconciled to a country Ufe, Day played an active role in scientific affairs in
Cheltenham. He became Vice-President of the Cotteswold Naturalists Field Club,
President of the Cheltenham Natural Science Society and President (as well as
active founder) of the School of Science in Cheltenham. He was also a member
of the Severn Fisheries Board and a member of the Council of the Gloucestershire
Archaeological Society. In the year before his death he received an honorary
Ll.D. from the University of Edinburgh (17 July 1889, CE.).
Thus, through singleness of purpose, extraordinary hard work and a persistence
that as often brought opposition as it did respect, Day finally won the reassurance
- so needed in his earlier years - that his contribution to ichthyology was appreci-
ated. There was, however, one man who did not care to endorse it - Albert Giinther
at the British Museum.
DISPUTATIONS WITH GUNTHER
The theme of our study has been the distribution by Day of specimens from his
enormous collection of Indian fishes. It has already been shown that Day's rela-
tionship with Albert Giinther probably played some part in the British Museum's
decision not to buy Day's best specimens when they were offered in 1875 (see p.
53). Some episodes in the quarrel between the two men have been described.
6o P. J. r. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
but the full force of the battle, and thus the justification for the eventual distribu-
tion of Day's collections, merits further treatment.
The battle was waged on two fronts. The first, until Giinther virtually withdrew
in 1871, was conducted in the pages of scientific journals, each party evidentlv
beUeving his own contribution to be well within the bounds of poUte scientific
controversy (but rarely agreeing that the other had kept to those limits). The
second was the personal confrontation over facilities at the British Museum, which
can now be reconstructed from letters, notes and memoranda ; the impression
given is that this was a battle on paper rather than a series of violent face-to-face
quarrels.
As a comparative newcomer to ichtliyologj-, and having entered the field as
an amateur, Day was highly vulnerable to criticism in the early years before his
reputation was estabUshed. Instead of the kindly encouragement that Giinther
could well have afforded to give. Day received in the years 1866-71 a series of often
harsh criticisms for all to read in the Zoological Record* and the Proceedings of the
Zoological Society. If help and advice were given, and they were sought initially
(Day to Giinther, 22 January 1865, BMNH.MS.Z.), the goodwill was soon eroded
by Gunther's re\-iews. In addition. Day most probably resented the air of authority
that surrounded Giinther, to the extent that Day's friend Neill could urge Day to
bow before it. Again, Day had all the confidence of one who knew his fish in the field,
who had handled them, drawn them and knew their native names ; for Giinther
they must be merely chscoloured specimens in jars, suitable for a kind of study
that bore no relation to Day's open-air hfe in India. Giinther, on the other hand,
evidently regarded Day as a beginner, anxious to run before he could walk, and
was perhaps resentful that Day had not consulted him more fully before launching
his first and fairly ambitious ichthyological work. What is apparent in this quarrel
is that there was already such strong conflict between the personalities of these two
men that friends felt it necessary to plead for restraint, sometimes on Day's part,
but also on Giinther's.
The naming of a new species after a distinguished colleague or after the collector
of the specimens would normally have been part of the relationship between two
such ichthyologists as Giinther and Day. In fact Day gave the name gnentheri
to a species of Mastacembehcs in the first part of his paper on Cochin fishes (Day,
1865a : 37). Gunther could have given Day's name to the new species of Catopra
(see above, p. 28) but he did not, even though Day had collected the specimens
and had already sent some useful additions to the Museum. Two 3'ears later Day
proposed N emacheilus gnentheri, of which he said (perhaps with an inward smile) :
'This very pretty httle Loach I have named after Dr. A. Giinther." (Day, 18673 :
286.) His final token of esteem was to supply the name gnentheri for a species of
Barhus, having heard from Giinther that the name he originally proposed had
already been used in that genus (Day, i868d : 583). Giinther promptly sank the
name in synonymy in the next issue of the Zoological Record. Thereafter, Day
• Founded by Gunther in 1864 as the Record of zoological literature, it was taken over in 1870 by the
Zoological Society of London and renamed the Zoological Record.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 61
probably felt that he had done his duty ; Gunther presumably never recognized
such a duty.*
What appears to have been the beginning of the quarrel was Giinther's naming
of a new species [Catopra malabarica) on Day's own Malabar specimens. There
is a strong feeling, but no proof, that Gunther must have had some inkling that
Day was engaged in describing Malabar fishes at that time. Although he received
only two small collections from Day in 1S64 {5 fishes), he should at least have
investigated whether Day had any pretensions to ichthyology. An entry in Giin-
ther's official diary for 1862-65 shows that on 22 July 1864 he was 'Examining a
collection of Indian fish made by Dr. Day . . .' (BMNH.MS.G. 3), clearly that
containing the new Catopra. There can be no certainty' that Day had previously
met Giinther (during his leave of 1857-58) and in any case Giinther was at that
time cataloguing reptiles while Day was known principally for his interest in birds
(see p. 22). It is difficult to believe, however, that Day did not attempt to meet
Gunther before the end of 1864 ; five years had passed since the first volume of
the great Catalogue had appeared (1859) and Day would surely have made a point
of meeting its author at the Zoological Society meetings, if not at the Museum.
WTiatever the circumstances, however, the die was cast. The hapless Catopra
malabarica now became the focus of a sharp exchange on the question of its correct
generic allocation (see above, pp. 29-30). Following Day's first notion, that the fish
was a new species of Badis (Day, 1865a : 30), and perhaps preceding his decision
in the Fishes of Malabar to accept Bleeker's opinion that it was either a Nandits
or closely allied to that genus. Day wrote to Thomas Jerdon in India enclosing a
copy of the Fishes of Cochin with a manuscript footnote suggesting that Catopra
was in fact Jerdon's genus Pristolepis (Jerdon, 1866 : 153). Jerdon evidently had
no high regard for Giinther. He accordingly wrote a letter addressed to the Editors
of the Annals & Magazine of Natural History in which (without mentioning Day)
he asserted that Giinther's Catopra was his own Pristolepis and Giinther's niala-
baricus his species marginatus, as described in his paper on the freshwater fishes
of southern India (Jerdon, 1848). Perhaps egged on by Day, he added :
It is very possible that Dr Gunther may not have seen my paper . . . but
it is quite as likely that he has seen it and ignored it ; and I therefore beg to
call his attention to it, as well as that of other naturalists who may not be
disposed to treat so slightingly the labours of fellow-workers in natural science,
writing under every disadvantage in a foreign land.
(Jerdon, 1865 : 298)
* Day named 96 of his species after some 42 friends, colleagues, illustrious predecessors, and officials
and others who helped him in his work. The most frequently honoured was j'ieter Bleeker (9 species),
followed by Brisbane Neill (8), Thomas Jerdon (7) and Ferdinand Stoliczka (7); Hamilton-Buchanan,
Edward Blyth. Sir Walter Ellliot and a Mr Haly (curator of the Colombo Museum) merited 4 species
each, while Giinther, William Sykes and Henry Thomas merited 3 : among the remainder were Wilhelm
Peters, Sir William Denison, John .Anderson of the Indian Museum (2 each), Franz Steindachner of
Vienna and George Bidie, fellow surgeon and later curator of the Madras Museum (i each). He evidently
had a particular regard and affection for Bleeker, Neill, Jerdon and Stoliczka, but it is surprising that
more species were not named after Peters, who seems to have rendered him as much help as did Bleeker
(see below, p. 13S).
62 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Jerdon went on to criticize as 'perfectly mythical' Giinther's claim, based on Brian
Hodgson's collections, that Therapon and certain other marine fishes found their
way into the freshwaters of Nepal (Giinther, 1861).
Gunther replied tartly that Catopra was not his genus but Bleeker's ; that of
course he knew Jerdon's paper, but the description of Pristolepis bore so much the
stamp of being written 'under every disadvantage in a foreign land' that it w£is
unrecognizable either to Bleeker or to himself ; and that some species of Therapon
were actually exclusively freshwater (Gunther, 1866 : 298). Jerdon was not to be
put off. Wliile acknowledging that Therapon and others came into freshwater, he
insisted that they never penetrated as far as Nepal ; Hodgson's specimen must
have come from Calcutta (Jerdon, 1866).* He then returned to Pristolepis and
said that he had heard from Day that it was his intention to treat Catopra as a
junior synonym. In Jerdon's opinion, moreover, 'the rules of nomenclature'
certainly did not authorize 'the assumption by any one individual, however learned,
to reject a genus or species because he states that he himself finds it impossible to
recognize it . . .' (Jerdon, 1866).
Reporting on this exchange in the Zoological Record for 1866 (p. 142), Gunther
loftily declared the case 'singularly instructive of the way in which the history of a
simple form of fish, the affinities of which cannot leave one in doubt for a moment,
may be confused from insufficient original description, and from want of experience
generally'. His strictures on Day and Bleeker, quoted earlier (p. 30), were no
less caustic.
In this summary manner Gunther disposed of Jerdon and Bleeker, but for Day
was reserved a further twist of the knife. Reviewing in the same issue of the Zoo-
logical Record his own Fishes of Zanzibar, Giinther smugly claimed that.
Science is indebted for this work to the Government of Bomba}*, who most
liberally assisted its production by taking 100 copies.
Gunther, hke any other reader of the Fishes of Malabar, knew quite well that the
Bombay Government had also patronized Day's book, which after all dealt with
fishes rather nearer to home ; but the extent of that patronage, so important to
Day, had been precisely four copies.
With Catopra apparently justified (but with no new grounds offered), Giinther's
next attack in the Zoological Record was on Day's paper on the Nilgiri fishes (Day,
1867a), both by uncharitable reference to the trout planting failure (see above,
p. 35) and by commenting that certain of Day's new species were evidently identical
with known and even common species ; he made similar remarks about some of
the new species or their generic allocations in Day's paper on Jladras fishes (Daj',
• Even fifteen years later, in his Introduction to the study of fishes, Giinther (i88o) still held that Therapon
occurred in Nepal. Commenting on this. Day echoed Theodore Gill in saying that Giinther, having
once asserted something, 'sticks to it' {criticisms of Giinther's book. Q 483). Gunther's mistake was
that of the museum worker with no experience of the country whose fauna he was describing, a position
much criticized by the new generation of Indian field-workers (see Gunther, 1975 : 163). Of another
of these 'Nepalese' fishes collected by Hodgson. Day found it 'almost unnecessary to observe [that it]
could not have been captured in such a locality' and he suspected that all Hodgson's Nepal fishes must
in fact have come from the Hooghly (Fishes of India : 81).
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 63
1867b). Day was not alone in finding his new species synonymized in the Zoo-
logical Record, but it was obviously galling, the more so since Giinther's frequent
use merely of the symbol = implied that the matter was above any dispute and
thus required no form of justification. In the 1868 edition of the Zoological Record,
however, Giinther paused to examine Day's Priacanthichthys madraspatensis, a
new genus and species that Day had rather rashly described on specimens only i-^
inches (38 mm) long (Day, 1868c : 193). In this case Giinther was fair, pointing
out that Day was perhaps unaware that many small acanthopterygians have a
serrated spine on the preoperculum (one of Day's diagnostic features), which dis-
appears with age.* On Day's paper on fishes collected at Kurnool (Day, i868d),
Gunther had no hesitation in relegating Barbus guentheri to the synonymy of Sykes'
B. koliis and he also questioned Day's views on two of Jerdon's cyprinid species :
if Day was right, then 'no reliance whatever can be placed on the generic distinc-
tions used by Mr. Jerdon', although in fact Day's determination 'was not in accord-
ance with the characters given in Mr. Jerdon's descriptions'.
In the Fishes of Zanzibar (March 1867, fide Gunther, 1971), Giinther criticized
Day for ignoring, in his Fishes of Malabar, an earlier paper by Blyth dealing with
Serranus lanceolatus, and for confusing it with S. horridus. Day found an oppor-
tunity to reply when he described the fishes in the Calcutta Museum, including
Blyth's specimens (Day, i86gb). He admitted overlooking Blyth's paper, but
he noted that Giinther himself had not referred in his Catalogue to some of the
synonymies proposed by Blyth. 'I only mention these instances to show how
the most accurate observers may overlook casual remarks', wrote Day (1869b).
Day then reassessed the problem of S. lanceolatus, showing that Blyth's specimens
were the same as the adult figured under that name in the Fishes of Malabar (pi. i,
fig. i) and that, in the juveniles at least, 5. lanceolatus was distinctive in lacking
pyloric caeca ; he ended with the question of whether the type specimens of
S. horridus also lack pyloric caeca, for this would justify his placing of horridus in
the synonymy of lanceolatus. In the Zoological Record for 1869 Giinther pounced :
The Recorder has dissected a S. lanceolatus in the presence of Mr Day, and shown
him that numerous pyloric appendages are present.
Day was forced to retreat and in the Fishes of India (p. 18) wrote rather lamely
'Caecal-pylori - very short, consequently in the young appear almost like a gland'.
Of interest is the evidence that Giinther and Day had examined the specimen
together, for this could only have occurred during Day's leave of 1864-66, either
at about the time of the Zoological Society meetings of January and March 1865
or later that year during preparation of the Fishes of Malabar.
Gunther's criticisms in the 1868 Zoological Record were answered in part by Day
in his paper on Orissa fishes (Day, 1869a), for the most part pohtely and without
rancour. Day also answered the earher charge made by Giinther in the Catalogue
(volume 7, p. 365) that Day had 'erroneously represented' the pectoral fin in Plata-
canthus agrensis {Fishes of Cochin, repeated in Fishes of Malabar : 204, pi. 14) by
• Forced to accept this, Day eventually recognized the fish as a juvenile of Serranus latijascialus, but
without reference to Giinther's prompting (Day, 1888 : 781).
64 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
omitting part of the fin membrane. 'The drawing was a correct one of the single
specimen' insisted Day ; the membrane was absent 'and I merely copied correctly
from what I saw before me, without adding to or subtracting from it' (Day, 1869a :
384)-*
Until now Giinther's criticisms had usually been brief. In the Zoological Record
for 1869 he still continued to equate (without justification) many of Day's new
species with already described forms, but here and there he inserted a remark,
often to cast doubt on Day's abilities as a taxonomist.
. . . but a fish described as having large scales and minute barbels is not
likely to be the B. heavani.
(Zoological Record, 1869 : 136)
Mr. Day is e\idently again too hasty in this identification. First, Hamilton-
Buchanan's fish has more than nine branched dorsal rays (a character the value
of which Mr. Day will by-and-by learn to appreciate). . . . Secondly, without
attempting to say what Mr. Day's fish may be, it cannot be the Crossocheilus
rostratus, as the latter has a pair of upper barbels only, but no maxillary barbels
(provided Mr. Day knows how to distinguish between these two kinds of
barbels).
[Zoological Record : 135)
The position of the barbels in the figure given by Sykes indicates a Eutropius,
and not a Pseudeutropius, a circumstance left unexplained by Mr. Day.
(Zoological Record : 135)
It was some years before Day got his own back for these scathing remarks in
the Record, but he obviously enjoyed penning the following quite gratuitous foot-
note to Pseudeutropius.
Dr. Giinther (Geolog. Mag. Oct. 1876) determines a fossil fish from Sumatra,
deficient of a head, to be Pseudeutropius. He does not note the position of
the barbels !
[Fishes of India : 471)
Pseudeutropius, intimately bound to the problem of Sykes' types (see below) and
provoking the same passions as had Catopra a few years earUer, merited a second
footnote of justification.
Dr. Giinther as a Recorder of facts, animadverted on my considering his well-
determined ! P. Mitchelli, a synonym of P. Sykesii, Jerdon, observing 'if he
cannot verify his assertion by the examination of the typical specimen, he
has no right to exchange the name of a well-determined species for a doubtful
one' (Zool. Record. 1865, p. 199). Jerdon had described the species fifteen
years before Dr. Giinther and sufficiently well for my recognizing it at the
locality where he found it.
(Fishes of India : 473)
* In a spare reprint of his Cochin paper (bound volume, Eg. 14) Day carefully aUdcd the missing
membrane in ink. having presumably found another specimen.
FRAN'CIS DAY (1829-1889) 65
The volumes of the Zoological Record, although intended as a record of current
literature and not a report on it, allowed 'the recorder [to] add any critical remarks
which he thinks necessary for the object in view' (Vol. I ; Preface : vi). The
object, as Gunther (1975 : 292) observes, seems to have been not unconnected with
an early training for the church, the Recorder 'preaching scientific taxonomy' from
his newly created pulpit. However, in subsequent issues of the Record Giinther
abandoned his caustic comments on Day's work and even the curt synonymies
disappear. His attacks had so frequently been aimed at Day that critics may have
enquired if personal motives were involved. Others were not so fortunate and two
years later Alfred Newton* felt that he should take Gunther to task over some
remarks in the reptile section of the Record.
Yesterday I was looking over your Reptilia. . . . The only one who does not
get a flick from you is Beddome who does not seem to have written anything
at all and therefore by rights his name ought not to appear ! But seriously
speaking, I think you have overdone it in the case of Theobald and Blanford.
Granted that they are ten times as bad as you make them out, they will believe,
and get others to believe, which is a much more unfortunate matter, that the
recorder is not fair as regards Indian herpetology. You bite one as if you
were a viperian snake and roll up the other to squash as if you were a boa
constrictor.
(31 July 1871, BMNH.MS.G. 16)
It would be interesting to know the role played by Arthur O'Shaughnessy in aU
this since he is said to have helped Gunther in compihng the Record (see below, p.
76) and in 1873-79 he appears as Recorder (no doubt with Giinther's guidance).
Giinther's command of Enghsh was certainly sufficient for normal purposes, al-
though in 1859 (admittedly only two years after his arrival) Owen had hinted to
him that he should work to improve it if he were to give lectures (Gunther, 1975 :
273). Even in 1862, Giinther was still a httle troubled by written English and
he asked H. T. Stainton, Secretary to the Ray Society, if his writings for the Rep-
tiles of British India could be 'carefully looked through before they go to press . . .
[by] men who have for the last five years been accustomed to my style. . . . This
has always been done by the readers of Taylor and Francis to my full satisfaction'
(cited in Gunther, 1975 : 300). One wonders whether O'Shaughnessy the poet did
not sometimes remodel Giinther's phrases (as he claimed to have done for some of
Giinther's papers - see p. 81), thus providing the often exquisite sting that charac-
terizes Giinther's attacks on Day.
Although Day was in England and visited the British Museum in September
1870 (see p. 45), it was not until mid-1871 that he saw the 1869 volume of the
Zoological Record, the most critical of his work to appear. He immediately wrote
a reply entitled 'Remarks on Indian fishes', which he sent to the Proceedings of the
Zoological Society (Day, 1871c). In this paper he acknowledged that at times he
* Alfred Newton (1829-1907), Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge. Newton was closely
associated with the Record from the beginning, both as author of the ornithological section and from
1871 as editor. See biography by Wollaston (1921) and obituaries (especially Proc. Roy. Soc. B, 80 : xlv-
xlix).
66 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
might have been in error, but he set out to 'show my correctness when it has been
erroneously called into question'. In the case of Serratius lanceolatus he found it
'unfortunate that the drift of mj- obser\'ations . . . have been so misunderstood
by the Recorder . . .', but the question of whether the pyloric caeca were present
or not was rather glossed over. On Pseudeutropiiis, however, Day justified him-
self on the basis of a Sykes type of Hypophthalmus taakree which Gunther Iiad
'courteously permitted' him to e.xamine at the British Museum in 1870 ; it was
truly that species but its label had been transposed from a specimen of H. goongwaree.
Finally, Day dealt \\ith the problem of barbels and dorsal finrays in Crossocheiliis
rostratus, about which Gunther had been so scathing. 'Lea\'ing aside personaUties',
\vrote Day, 'as irrelevant to scientific discussion, wherein facts are the subject in
question ... I think some error has found entrance [into the Recorder's state-
ments].' At this point, and perhaps over-anxious to prove himself right. Day
made a mistake in his quotation from Hamilton-Buchanan's original description
of Cypritius bata. It clinched his argument that the fish had only nine dorsal
finrays. When Day realized his error he wTote a hasty note to Brisbane XeiU,
dated apparently 2 September 1871, asking the latter to make a correction to his
paper (inferred from James Harting to Gunther, 28 December 1871, BMNH.MS.G.
15). As a result, a considerable row developed since Day's instructions did not
reach Phihp Sclater, the editor of the Proceedings, until late in December, b\' wliich
time Day's paper had been read before the Society (7 November) and Gunther had
already delivered a stinging reply (5 December). NeiU explained to Sclater that
the fault was his ; he had been abroad at the time (Neill to Sclater, 22 December
1871, BMNH.MS.G. 15). Gunther objected strongly to any changes being made,
but the Publication Committee of the Society agreed Day's alterations and allowed
Gunther 'liberty to alter his criticism upon that paper accordingly' (Harting to
Gunther, 31 December 1871, BMNH.MS.G. 15).
Giinther's counter-attack was more brusque, incisive and final than Day's 'Re-
marks' (Gunther, 1871). On the so-called types of Sykes' Hypophthalmus taakree
Gunther found it 'almost incredible that this elaborate statement of Mr. Day pro-
ceeds entirely from his own imagination and is whoUy fallacious'. The 'trans-
position of labels [was] merely a convenient supposition of Mr. Day (used by him
not for the first time), \vithout even a shadow of probabihty in this case'. He
accepted as a compliment Day's reference to his 'courteous' permission in being
able to examine the specimen, but he had to observe that none of the Museum's
employees 'have the power of permitting or denying access to the collections'.
For the finray count of Hamilton-Buchanan's Cyprinus he was able to present
an even better case now that Day's argument had been partially destroyed by
having to give the correct quotation from the original description ; to clinch the
matter Giinther reproduced a tracing from HamUton-Buchanan's drawing and,
lest his readers could not count, he numbered the branched finrays one to ten.*
* A loose leaf inserted at the relevant page in Day's own copy of Hamilton-Buchanan's Fishes oj the
Ganges (Q 498) shows the struggle that Day had to find a loophole in Giinther's argument. He strongly
resented Gunther's numbering of the dorsal finrays, which he noted 'were added. They are not on the
original drawing.'
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 67
Giinther concluded that 'as long as Mr. Day introduces into his papers statements
of the kind mentioned above, I feel that for the future, it will be undesirable to
employ mj' time in taking notice of similar communications to the Society'.
Giinther had sent his reply to Sclater and had asked that it be read by a referee
before pubUcation. Sclater replied that he could 'see nothing objectionable except
two expressions which I should like modified' and that he could see no point in
referring the paper (5 December 1871, BMNH.MS.G. 16). Giinther hastily assured
Sclater that he did not think there was 'anj'thing objectionable' in the paper ; his
desire to have it referred 'was not to relieve me of anxiety as regards the propriety
of some part I had written ; but to draw the attention of the referrees & through
them of the Comm. of Public, to the character of previous papers of which the last
finally provoked my reply'. He added that he could not move 'in so direct a
manner, as I should have done, if I had not been the party concerned' (draft on
reverse of Sclater to Giinther, loc. cit.). It is difficult to imagine how much more
direct Giinther could have been, at least with a pen.
In a final paper of that year. Day (iSyid : 716) took Giinther to task over the
swimbladder in siluroid fishes, a subject that appeared 'if one may form an opinion
from the British Museum Catalogue, to have escaped Dr. Gflnther's attention'. In
277 pages of siluroid descriptions, Day found only four mentions of the swimbladder
and he painstakingly cited them in full 'to obviate the possibility of it being sup-
posed that I wish to create any erroneous impressions respecting Dr. Gunther's
valuable ichthyological writings (see Zool. Record for 1869). Nothing is further
from my wish, which is to obtain facts, no matter who the author may be, and, if
possible, to take nothing on trust from any naturalist, however excellent an observer
he is, when I can examine into the matter myself. The comment was, of course,
rather unnecessary and its elaborate padding is characteristic of Day's quite un-
subtle pretence that his jibes at Giinther were solely in the interests of truth.
Meanwhile, he evidently did not forget (or forgive) Gunther's incisive counter-
attack in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society. He wrote a partial reply (Day,
1872 : 320 - the Cyprinus hata question), but in 1873 came his opportunity to
justify himself more fully. In that year the Secretary of State for India authorized
the return to India of the 28 volumes of Hamilton-Buchanan's writings, notes and
drawings which for over sixty years had lain in the India Office Library in London
(Day, i873e ; see Gudger, 1924, and Hora, 1929, for a history of this material).
Examining these and comparing Hamilton-Buchanan's descriptions with those
given by Giinther in the Catalogue, Day drew further support for his interpretation
of Hamilton-Buchanan's dorsal finray counts. Giinther had commented scath-
ingly that 'it requires but slight acquaintance with Hamilton Buchanan's works
to see that his rule was to count the last ray (which is generally split to the base)
as one and not as two. Mr Day's statement to the contrary is quite incomprehen-
sible'. Day now argued that if this were truly the case, then Gunther's counts
should be the same as Hamilton-Buchanan's. But, in a number of species of
Pimelodus given in the Catalogue, Giinther's counts were consistently lower than
those of Hamilton-Buchanan, even in the case of P. tengana, of which Giinther
had no specimens and must, therefore, have 'altered the figures from 8 to 7, and.
68 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
I am convinced, correctly so'. 'Surely', concluded Day, 'the foregoing twenty-
two instances out of thirty-two consecutive species are sufficient to prove that
Hamilton-Buchanan frequently counted the last ray of the dorsal fin split to its
base as two, although "but a slight acquaintance" with his writings might lead one
to consider he counted them as one' (Day, i873e : 746). The question is certainly an
important one in some groups of fishes, but Day did not fully solve it since, as he
himself admitted, Hamilton-Buchanan was not consistent and occasionally reduced
the number of finrays. He had, however, dispelled the slur on his own ability to
count accurately.
In the same paper, Daj- also commented on other contentious species and he
returned to the problem of Sykes' types in the British Museum, the presence of
which Giinther had denied but later qualified (Giinther, 1872 : 877), remembering
that he had actually Usted two Sykes types in volume 5 of the Catalogue (under
Schilbe pabo, p. 46 ; and under Glyptosternum lonah, p. 187). Finding the door
sUghtly ajar. Day now pushed it wide open and, with the assurance that he was
not 'uselessly drawing attention to Giinther's statements', managed to leave the
impression that other Sykes types might be in the British Museum (including, one
would suppose, that of Hypophthalmus taakree).
The disputations in the literature had a wide audience and at least some readers
took sides and perhaps made their views known to either Giinther or Day. One
who SNTnpathized with Day was Richard BUss, Assistant under Louis Agassiz at
the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Harvard, although Agassiz's desire for
the types of all Day's species may have encouraged expression of this sympathy.
Bliss wrote :
I have been much interested in your communications to the Lond. Zool. Soc.
... I quite agree with you in your controversy with Dr Giinther who I think
is very unfair as he always is vsith anyone who differs from him. In his last
communication (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1871, pt. Ill p. 761) he seems to have lost
both candour and self-respect. But his personaUties injure only himself.
(Bliss to Day, 22 July 1872, LS. 2)
Unfortunately, there are no letters to or from Day or Bliss in Harvard, either
in the Houghton Library or amongst the other Agassiz correspondence in the
library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Miss C. Jakeman, in lift.).
Another of Giinther's American critics, and by far the most outspoken, was
Theodore GiU (1837-1914), whose pubhshed attacks on Giinther far outdid any-
thing that Day ever penned. Gill wTote a number of reviews of Giinther's Intro-
duction to the study of fishes and his Ichthyology article for the Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica, two of which (Forest and Stream and The Nation) Day pasted into one of his
bound volumes of reprints (Q 483). Gill found Giinther's book 'a very, very poor
one' and he cited Giinther's confusion over the nomenclature of the blackbasses
(Micropterus) as just one illustration of 'Giinther's negligence and slovenliness',
concluding that 'It is difficult to believe that one who has written so much on
fishes as the author has should make so many lapses. The errors commence on
the first page and flow in an almost uninterrupted, but varying, stream to the
FRy\NCIS DAY (1829-1889) 69
end of the work' (Gill, 1881). At the back of this volume (Q 483) Day added
five pages of his own comments on Gunther's book, correcting a number of further
errors not picked up by Gill. A reprint of Day's monograph on Indian cyprinids
(Day, 1871b) is marked on the title page 'Professor Gill with the author's compli-
ments' (Eg. 15) ; although it was not sent, it suggests that the two corresponded
and GiU, like BUss, would surely have been on Day's side.
The disputes conducted in the pages of scientific journals may at times have
been rehshed by Day, but, as Gunther showed, they could be terminated at will.
Those over Day's rights as a visitor to the British Museum, however, could not
be ignored. Gunther, because of his position there and his hopes of promotion,
was often forced to play a purely defensive role. Day, on the other hand, could
attack at any level above that of Gunther with little or no fear of reprisals from
his own superiors. The conflict was often fierce, yet there are occasions when the
evidence suggests polite, if not amicable, interludes.
The early period has been largely covered. The first quarrel, over Catopni, may
have set the tone for subsequent personal relations between the two men, but it
was not until 1870 that Day returned to England and visited the Museum again.
On this occasion he spoke warmly of Gunther's readiness to let him examine the
collections (Day, 1871b : 97), although his motives for writing this are suspect (see
p. 45 above). However, the visit to England was short and he spent little time
at the Museum, being more concerned with looking at various salmon fisheries
and hatcheries (17 July 1889, CE.). His next leave, of about three or four weeks
in 1872, was for the purpose of getting married, but he managed at least one visit
to the British Museum to check on Andaman fishes. He also made a hurried visit
just before he returned to India (April 1872, appointment for i8 April, BMNH.MS.Z.).
The real battle over the Museum facilities did not come until Day's final return
to England in 1874 to write the Fishes of India. It was at this time that Day was
forced to write his weekly note requesting permission to examine certain specimens,
which he listed on another page of the letter. Gunther would have justified this
procedure on the grounds that some warning was needed in order to have the jars
brought out from the Spirit Room and carried over to the Visitors' Room ; whereas
Day must have strongly resented the implication that, after nearly ten years of
contact with the Museum, he was still not trusted to look over the shelves and
select the jars he wanted.
Barely two months after his arrival in England in 1874, Day felt constrained
to make an official complaint to Richard Owen, Superintendent of the four natural
history Departments, about the difficulties he was meeting in his weekly visits to
the Museum. He had already written an extremely polite letter to Gunther point-
ing out that 'As the list of specimens [in volume i of Gunther's Catalogue of Fishes]
does not include any placed in the Museum later than 1859' he would feel obhged
to see a Ust or look over all Red Sea and Indian Ocean Serranidae in case his new
species was amongst them (undated, BMNH.MS.Z.). Dissatisfied with the result.
Day addressed three foolscap pages of complaints to Owen (21 August 1874,
BMNH.MS.G. 15) in which he asked if only those specimens listed in Gunther's
Catalogue were available for study and if the remainder were accessible solely 'at
70 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
the option of that Gentleman'. The only list available to Day was the Catalogue
and Day was aware that a large number of potentiaUy interesting specimens had
since accumulated. Four years earlier, in the eighth volume of the Catalogue,
Gunther had in fact tabulated the numbers of fishes received by the Museum
subsequent to the pubhcation of each volume, the grand total being no less than
6314 specimens of 958 species. Day had no means of knowing what these specimens
might be. He therefore complained of 'obstacles raised which I am surprised
could be permitted to exist for one moment' and although he regretted that 'scien-
tific discussions in ichthyology have rendered Dr. Giinther not so friendly as might
have been perhaps desirable', he did not seek nor ask for Giinther's help in his
work ; he only wanted either access to the collection (i.e. the Spirit Room) to
see what was on the shelves, or freedom to inspect a revised catalogue showing the
latest acquisitions.
Owen immediately passed the letter to Gray asking for his comments, and also
those of Gunther, for guidance in framing an official reply (22 August 1874, BMNH.
MS.G. 15). Giinther had been ill all week (BMXH.MS.Doc. 1 : 3), but after his
return to work on 29 August he started to compose a firm, well-tempered reply to
Daj's allegations. 'I am at a loss', he wrote, 'to see what more could have been
done to satisfy Mr Day, or that I have been failing in treating him with that courtesy
which is due and which I offer to every visitor to the Zoological Department.' In
fact, he was 'surprised at the contents & spirit of the letter' since, when Day had
paid his usual weekly \'isit on the 14th, the conversation had been so friendly
that Day had offered to give him a Ust of percoids which he thought the Museum
might profitably exchange with him (Gunther to Owen, 9 September 1874, BMNH.
MS.G. 15).
The nub of the argument was whether, as the Preface to volume eight of the
Catalogue seemed to implj', there was in fact a set of Catalogue volumes with all
additional specimens entered in. Certainly, this would appear to be the most
logical method of recording subsequent additions, the data being transferred from
the Acquisition Registers. Surprisingly, Gray said that there was not. Answering
Owen's initial request for comments on Day's complaints. Gray mentioned the
latter's visit of the previous Friday, stating that Day had been content to await
Gunther's return. Gray went on,
I may for your own information say that there is no revised Catalogue in the
Museum containing all the specimens received between 1859 & 1870 inserted
in their places, such as Mr Day asks for ; nor indeed that the quotation from
the preface of the last volume of the Catalogue imphes that such exists.
(Gray to Owen, 24 August 1874, BMNH.MS.G. 15)
Day himself had said that 'At first leave was given for the Catalogue of 1859
being filled in, and such was done for some distance, anyhow to less than 300 pages'
(Day to Owen, 21 August 1874, BMNH.MS.G. 15). Giinther, in his reply to Owen
(9 September 1874, BMNH.MS.G. 15), confirmed this, stating that the interleaved
copy of Part A of volume i had been annotated but not Part B, so that the addi-
tional Pristipotna specimens sought by Day were not hsted, although Day 'could
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 71
have got what he wanted by merely asking Gray for all the specimens of a parti-
cular species'. Giinther admitted, however, that he possessed 'for the exclusive
use of the Department, a list of these additions, accompanied by numerous M.S.-
notes of a more or less tentative nature for our guidance in future examinations
. . . and we have been engaged for some time in copying from this list [into] the
Students' Catalogue all the specimens entered'. Gunther promised to submit to
Owen soon the completed Students' copy and five weeks later, on i October,
Gunther noted : 'I called today on Professor Owen, to show him our students' copy
of the Catalogue of Fishes' (Giinther's official diary, 1872-74, BMNH.MS.G. 3).
Day's memorandum to Owen was evidently a hasty reaction after a visit to the
Museum on 21 August. Two days earlier he had written his usual request, but
since Gunther had told him on the previous Friday that he would be on holiday,
Day asked that 'the genera Pristipoma, Diagramma, Gerres, Dentex and Synagris
[be] left so that I could complete them during your absence. If I could see a list
of the species in the Museum I could easily select those I wished to examine'. (19
August 1874, BMNH.MS.Z.) Gunther received this letter and wrote in the margin
'Mr Day requested to appoint a day ... to select with me such uncatalogued
specimens as he wished to examine'. Against the list he wrote : 'These specimens
may be found by Tomlinson & handed over to Mr Day for examination'. It is
difficult to see what went wrong, but Day evidently came away extremely angry.
The upshot was a formal letter from Owen assuring Day that 'every specimen
in the Department of Zoology, for which you have a student's ticket, numbered
and registered as the property of the Trustees, will be at your service for study
and comparison as heretofore . . .' and 'there has never been any intention on
the part of the Keeper or Asst. Keeper to withhold such specimens. Catalogues or
Lists from you' (16 October 1874, BMNH.MS.G. 15).
With this. Day had to be content. However, he had apparently heard from
Wilhelm Peters in BerUn that during the latter's visit to the British Museum in
September (probably 22 September - list of twelve reptiles requested, BMNH.
MS.F.) he had had a similar experience. 'I much regret to hear', wrote Day, 'that
the reptiles of the British Museum were not freely open to your inspection when
you were in London. I hear that Dr Gunther ordered them to be so closed from
view.' (Day to Peters, 14 October 1874, ZMB.MS.) On 21 December Day wrote
to Peters that he had had some correspondence 'with the Officials at the British
Museum respecting Dr Giinther's obstructiveness' and he had told Owen of Peters'
troubles during his visit ; Owen had asked that Peters write direct to him if he
had any complaints so that Owen would then 'be in a position to obtain the passing
of definite rules on the subject for future guidance' (ZMB.MS.). As far as can be
judged, Peters did not do this but wrote instead to Day, who sent an extract of
the letter to Owen (now headed 'Abstract from Peters' letter to Day [Sept. 16,
deleted] Dec. 21. 1874', BMNH.MS.G. 16). In his letter Peters said that he had
had no difficulty 'in seeing those specimens of the Brit. Mus. which I could point
out, and I must in this respect acknowledge the great courtesy of Mr 0'Sh.[augh-
nessy, the Assistant]. But I was not allowed (by special orders of Dr Giinther
as Mr O'Sh. told me) to see the collections as I was accustomed to do before Dr G.
72 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
became Assistant Kpr. . . . We have the same rules as the Brit. Mus. but the
interpretation depends on the liberality or narrow minded disposition of the
Keeper.'
Owen sent this extract down to Gunther and expressed much concern since Peters,
as Director of the Berlin Zoological Museum, was clearly an important visitor
(30 December 1874, BilNH.MS.G. 16). Once again, Gunther had been on leave when
the incident occurred. To make things worse. Gray had just retired from the
Keepership (21 December) and although Gunther was the natural successor and
stepped into the breach, his formal appointment as Keeper of Zoology was not
made until the following February and he was presumably anxious not to offend
the Trustees in any wa\'. His reply to Owen, as had been his earlier reply o\'er
Day's complaint, was patient, reasonable and correct. The Spirit Room had
never been open to visitors except under supervision ; he had 'considered it my
duty to remind Mr O'Shaughnessy, with the cognisance of Dr Graj', of that standing
order, when I left for my hohdays' ; it was not intended solelj- for Dr Peters, who
was 'the first man I should have exempted from it' (30 December 1874, BMNH.
MS.G. 16).
This 'standing order' dated from late in 1S64 when a small notebook was begun
in which visitors were asked to enter the name of the species and letter-mark of
the specimens (from Giinther's Catalogue) which they wanted to examine. This
instruction is given inside the cover of the two surviving books (BMNH. MS. F.),
together with the warning that visitors 'are not allowed to take the specimens
out of the cases' to which, in the first book, was added, and in the second book
copied, the important restriction 'or to enter the spirit room by themselves'. The
question of the safety of the specimens had been raised earher that year by Gray
in a letter to Giinther in which he said that complaints had reached him that 'some
of the type specimens of Reptiles & fish have been injured by being cut into under
the pretence of examining some part of their anatomy'. This letter, dated i June
1864, was pasted inside the first notebook, then removed and pasted into the second.
Thus the Assistant on duty could warn visitors of the rules.
Both Owen and Giinther wrote to Peters with assurances and apologies and
there one would have expected Peters to have left the matter. Unfortunately,
however, Gunther could not help taking a swipe at Day, the instigator of the plot
as he saw it (letter not seen, probably in Berlin ; possible undated draft in BMNH.
MS.G. 16). Peters reacted strongly (Peters to Giinther, 3 January' 1875, original
in German and Giinther's translation into English, BMNH. MS.G. 16). He admitted
that his letter had replied to Day's request that he make an official complaint but,
There is no foundation in your supposition that persons who do not wish you
well, have influenced mj' judgement. On the contrary, I have heard only that
by which your exertions, literary as well as museological, are acknowledged,
even from Day. . . .
Nor was Peters prepared to dismiss this as an isolated incident. He reminded
Giinther of two previous occasions '. . . which I have got over but not forgotten'.
He continued :
FRANCIS DAY (1S29-1889) 73
Therefore I am inclined to think that you deceive yourself when you beUeve
[yourself] to have been particularly liberal to others. And it is my conviction
that, if you could really carry out this principle, nobody would have a more
pleasant or better position. For who has such means as you in the richest
of all Museums, for gladdening and obliging those who look for instruction?
That Peters treated the whole affair as more than just a temporary disagreement
is shown in the final paragraph of his letter.
I have hved many a happy day in London, and I believe that the connexion
which obtained between our two Museums, had been to mutual benefit. If I
do not see again the former, and if the latter is broken, I regret it the more
as the essential cause has been a german-born countryman, although I will,
after your last letter, no more assume the deliberate intention. Good-bye.
Gunther would not have needed to translate this into English, so he was presum-
ably requested to do so by Owen and he cannot have relished the task. If Peters
was to be taken seriously, and Owen had already made it clear to Gunther that he
regarded Peters as one of the 'distinguished original Contributors to our common
Science' (Owen to Gunther, 30 December 1874, BMNH.MS.G. 16), then clearly this
greatly strengthened Day's case against Gunther. Moreover, Day was much more
dangerous ; he visited the Museum weekly and, unhke Peters, he showed no reluc-
tance to take his complaints over Giinther's head.
Not only had Day been instrumental in causing a serious rift between London
and Berhn. Through him, the delicate web of relationships within the Museum,
never very harmonious, was also affected, for at the foot of his letter to Gunther
of 3 January 1875 Peters added the following footnote.
P.S. At this moment I receive a note from Mr O'Shaughnessy who emphati-
cally asserts never to have received an instruction which you assure me to have
given. I cannot find leisure to enter into correspondence with him, especially
as I have expressly stated his courtesy, and I have asked Mr Sharpe to sift
the matter.
Some explanation is required of the position occupied by Arthur O'Shaughnessy
(1844-81). A protege of Edward Bulwer Lytton (later Lord Lytton, who had
entered into a morganatic relationship with his aunt), O'Shaughnessy had joined
the Museum as Transcriber in the Department of Printed Books in 1861. Two
years later he was transferred to the Zoology Department as an Assistant in entomo-
logy, largely on the recommendation of Gray in an attempt to block the possible
appointment of Henry Bates, lately returned from his South American travels and
a firm supporter of Darwin. The subsequent and, for Gray, embarrassing discovery
that O'Shaughnessy 's poor sight and awkwardness rendered him totally unfit to
handle insects led to his further transfer in 1864 to the Geology Department, but
in practice (from 1865) he was assigned to Owen as clerical assistant but on loan
also to Gunther in the preparation of the Catalogues, the Zoological Record and the
registers, as well as in curation of the fish and reptile collections.
74 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALVVAR
As Paden (1964a) has shown, O'Shaughnessy, the minor Victorian poet* and a
man quite unsuited to a zoological career, became both a pawn in the struggle for
authority waged between Richard Owen and the aiUng J. E. Gray, and the object
of a bargain between Owen and Lord Lytton whereby O'Shaughnessy's continued
emplo3-ment by the British Museum was a tacit quid pro quo in Owen's campaign
for political support for lus cherished dream of a separate museum for natural
history. What O'Shaughnessy brought to this tangle of interests was nothing
more than a capacity for incompetence and the crime of leaving a box of lucifers
on his table in the Spirit Room. The story is well documented by Paden (1964a)
and his account is summarized here. Having previously supported O'Shaughnessy
to prevent the entry of Bates (and Darwinism), Gray now felt it expedient to engi-
neer O'Shaughnessy's dismissal by means of a short letter to the Principal Librarian,
John Winter Jones, pointing mainly to the serious fire risk arising from leaving
matches in the Spirit Room (24 October 1870). What Herbert Spencer had called
'the greatest boon and blessing that has come to mankind in the 19th century'
was to prove a sore embarrassment to O'Shaughnessy. In November 1870 he
was called before the Trustees, but largely through Owen's recommendation for
lenienc}' (triggered successively by O'Shaughnessy's pleas to Lytton and Lytton's
bargain with Owen), O'Shaughnessy escaped with merely a severe reprimand. In
February the next year Gray tried again, but he made the tactical mistake of a
direct request to the Trustees to remove O'Shaughnessy from the Zoology Depart-
ment (on the grounds of his lack of aptitude, unpleasant manner and bad example
to other Assistants). The two evidently did not get on well and in O'Shaughnessy's
opinion Gray was 'as impervious to such [propitiatory] words as a wild beast in
his den. He would not even hear one of them, as from the very first he had always
stopped me with a savage unintelligible splutter of his own. He has a way of
gnashing his teeth at me . . .' (O'Shaughnessy to Lord Lytton, in Paden, 1964a :
24). t Owen was now requested to comment on Gray's report and this time he
needed no prompting from Lord Lytton. He gave full support to O'Shaughnessy,
scoffed openly at Gray's accusations and clearly demonstrated his authority, as
Superintendent of all four Departments of natural history, over Gray the Keeper
of Zoologj'. Giinther also supported O'Shaughnessy, but his report was withheld
from the Trustees by Gray (which only intensified the struggle once Owen and
Giinther discovered what had happened). The Principal Librarian initially took
• O'Shaughnessy published four volumes of poetry: An epic of woman {1870), Lays of France (1872),
Music and moonlight (1874) and Songs of a worker {1881 - posthumous). The ode beginning 'We are
the music makers/.\nd we are the dreamers of dreams' most frequently finds a place in anthologies. In
igo2 Edward Elgar seems to have come across it and been fascinated by its musical possibilities, eventu-
ally publishing The music makers - ode (Opus 69) in 1912 (HMV ASD 2311 apparently the only extant
recording); in a letter of 19 July of that year, Elgar wrote: '. . . "World losers and world forsakers
for ever and ever." How true it is' (Kennedy. 1968 : 131 -we are indebted to S. C. A. Holmes for
drawing attention to this Elgar/O'Shaughnessy link). Authors are agreed that O'Shaughnessy as often
failed to reach these heights, but of the best Percy (1923) wrote 'By some sorcery this man produced
beauty of a rare and charmed and perfect kind; and this he gave to the world.' Chaitivel is such a poem.
t .\ photograph of Gray (fig. 4 in Gunther, 1974). taken some years earlier in 1863. shows a rather
formidable man who could well have been intimidating to a young Assistant. Gunther, who frequently
referred to Ciray as 'his beloved chief, also spoke of him as 'a most curious man: one day the most
kind hearted creature; at other times malice itself (Giinther to his wife Roberta, 25 October 1868-
cited in Guntlier, 1975 : 155).
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 75
Gray's side, most probably because of his opposition to Owen's plans for splitting
off the natural history portions of the Museum. In the event, O'Shaughnessy's
pay increments and future promotion were made dependant on a satisfactory
report to the Trustees and this Owen and Giinther hastily arranged (behind Gray's
back) by means of a test in the identification of a recent collection of reptiles.
Gray's defeat was complete once his suppression of Giinther's report was made
known to the Principal Librarian. In any case, he was shortly forced to resign
on grounds of health (21 December 1874).*
On New Year's Day 1875, when relations between Day and Giinther, and between
the latter and Peters, were already severely strained, O'Shaughnessy decided that
he should attempt to clarify matters. Giinther had probably spoken with O'Shaugh-
nessy on 30 December (on receipt of Owen's request for an explanation) and
O'Shaughnessy perhaps felt that he was being blamed for the affair. To exonerate
himself, but with no intended disloyalty to Giinther, he wrote the following to
Peters.
I have been much grieved to learn that you have expressed yourself dissatisfied
with your very short visit to the Reptile Collection last Autumn ... I was
so truly under the impression from what you said that I had given you all the
facihties you required that it would be almost unfair to myself not to write
to you on the subject. And first of all I would state most emphatically that
such an order as that you or any other person 'should not be permitted to see
the collections' has never emanated from Dr Giinther, nor have I so interpreted
his meaning, nor have I acted in such a manner to any visitor scientific or
otherwise. On the contrary I frequently open the Cases to visitors or students
& assist herpetologists wisliing to make general comparisons to select & find
the specimens in the Cases themselves. This however you did not request me
to do.
(O'Shaughnessy to Peters, i January 1875, ZMB.MS.)
Apparently, Peters merely gave O'Shaughnessy a list of specimens to be brought
out. There was also some misunderstanding over whether Peters required a table
at which to work, but O'Shaughnessy 'distinctly understood you to say (& others
also) that it was not necessary . . .' (loc. cit.). Presumably one of the 'others'
was R. Bowdler Sharpe, ornithologist and Assistant in the Zoology Department,
to whom Peters (in his footnote) said he would write 'to sift the matter' (see p. 73).
Far from healing matters, O'Shaughnessy's letter seems to have confused the
issue even further. In Peter's eyes, O'Shaughnessy was virtually calling Giinther
a liar : Giinther had issued an order, O'Shaughnessy now denied it.
The Visitors' Room and the Spirit Room were on opposite sides of a courtyard,
with O'Shaughnessy's room adjoining the Spirit Room, the latter being 'not used
for working in simply because it has long been unfit for that purpose' (O'Shaughnessy
* Copies of the reports on O'Shaughnessy by Gray and Giinther, as well as relevant letters, are in
BMNH.MS.Rep. 6 and 7, including Gray's testy statement that 'I hear he is not deficient in talent,
either as a musician, an artist or poet; but these are not qualifications that are useful to me in the
Zoological Department' (6; 177).
76 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
to Peters, loc. cit.). In some way Peters misunderstood and, in Giinther's eyes,
this would place Peters on Day's side since he probably saw the affair as an
extension of his quarrel with Day. At aU costs Peters must be won over and he
WTOte him a second placatory letter regretting that his first had not succeeded and
suggesting that the apparent contradiction between his statements and those of
O'Shaughnessy could have resulted from a misinterpretation of O'Shaughnessy's
words (undated draft, in German, BMNH.MS.G. 16). To Giinther's relief, Peters
agreed to forget the unpleasant events, feeling it unjust to blame Giinther for the
awkwardness of an Assistant and especially of one who had not been of Giinther's
own choice (Peters to Giinther, ii January 1S75, in German, BMNH.MS.G. 16).
Peters may also have had in mind his brush with O'Shaughnessy of a few years
earlier, the latter in his first herpetological paper having had the temerity to ques-
tion the vaUdit}' of a lizard species named by Peters (O'Shaughnessy, 1869a).
The quick retort (Peters, 1869) and the equally hasty defence (O'Shaughnessy,
1869b) were not forgotten, at least by 0'Shaughness\', who made another unsuc-
cessful attempt to justify himself (O'Shaughnessy, 1875), significantly not long
after Peters' apparent acceptance of Giinther's and not his own version of what
had been said during Peters' visit to the Museum in September of the pre\aous year.
O'Shaughnessy continued as Assistant until his early death in 1881, having
suffered tragic personal losses in the deaths of his two sons and of his wife (Paden,
ig64b). The young Edmund Gosse once described his appearance in the British
Museum as 'a sort of mystery, revealed twice a day. In the morning, a smart
figure in a long frock-coat, with romantic eyes and bushy whiskers, he would be
seen entering the monument and descending into its depths, to be observed no
more till he as swiftly rose and left it late in the afternoon' (Gosse, 1925 : 124).
He wrote a further nine papers, edited the Zoological Record (1873-79) and coped
with the transfer of all data on specimens to the students' copy of Giinther's Cata-
logue, as well as routine matters of registration. There is no mention of his name
in Day's letters or manuscripts, but Day must have come to know him well during
his frequent visits to the Museum. One wonders was he merely irritated by the
short-sighted young man, or did he find time to explore the other O'Shaughnessy,
the dreamer of dreams so sublime as Chaitivel ?
For a while all seems to have gone smoothly. Day wrote his weekly requests
to examine material and the specimens were set out in the Visitors' Room. On
one occasion Giinther's private feelings appear in a pithy comment scribbled on
the back of one of Day's requests (15 April 1875, BMNH.MS.Z.).
Altogether
100 specimens in spirit
33 dried specimens
133 specim. examined between 11 & 12.30
or 3 specimens every two minutes. AG.
Early the following year Day complained of wasted journeys because he was
not informed of unavailable material until after his arrival at the Museum (Day
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 77
to Gunther, 23 January 1876, BMNH.MS.Z.). This became even more annoying
when Day moved in February 1876 to his final liome, Kenilvvorth House in Chel-
tenham, since his weekly visits now involved a long train journey and considerable
expense.* On one occasion he was so incensed that he wrote to E. J. Meirs, Gray's
amanuensis, enclosing a shilling stamp so that Gunther, should he be unable to
let Day know in time when a visit was inconvenient, might telegraph 'without
risking pecuniary loss' (undated, BMNH.MS.Z.). This was not the only annoy-
ance. In December 1876 Day was still having difficulty over inspecting the
Registers. He wrote asking to see from the Register what fishes the Museum
had obtained from Brisbane Neill 'along with Barhus guentheri I68.10.22-24 col-
lected by myself (5 December 1876, BMNH.MS.Z.). Apparently he expected
difficulties, for he wrote a second letter that day requesting to see the 'register of
the British Museum fish for 1868 which as I understand you refuse to permit my
having access to' (loc. cit.). The result of this demand is not recorded, but possibly
Giinther acceded for fear of another memorandum to his superiors.
Only a few months passed before Day found yet another obstruction in his way.
In April 1877 he exploded with indignation on discovering that five of the glass-
stoppered bottles that he requested set out for him were tied over with bladders
'so as to prevent them being opened and the specimens examined, and this (if I
am not mistaken) has been done quite recently ~ perhaps since I wrote, some days
ago'. He asked if it was intended that he should take the bladders off 'as it is
useless looking through a round bottle as everything is distorted' (April 1877,
BMNH.MS.Z.). Having visited the museum in Paris (in 1874, ZMB.MS.) Day
was quite familiar with this method of sealing specimen jars (which is still in use
there today and requires a scalpel and some courage, knowing the trouble required
to re-seal them) but it was not then or now a practice in the British Museum.
Letters such as this imply that Day usually did not meet Gunther during his
visits to the Museum. Two letters (one undated but from Ryde, the other 19
August 1874, BMNH.MS.Z.) indicate that, at least on those occasions, the Attendant
Tomhnson and not O'Shaughnessy was responsible for finding the jars and setting
them out on the visitors' bench, f Thus, direct confrontations between Day and
Giinther may have been rare. It is unfortunate that the Cheltenham material
does not include any of Giinther's replies, if indeed he thought an answer worth
while. For example, in 1874 when Day was working through his Serranidae,
what was Gunther's response to the following jibe?
Should there be no objection I should also feel obliged if you would kindly
have the blue lines on Col. Playfair's specimen termed Mesoprion notata
* Ten years earlier Day had claimed £2.2.0 for the return journey from the Board of Revenue - Pro-
ceedings, 4 June 1866, in Q 65S. This is rather high and may have included the cost of a cab at either
end since in 1S86 the Paddington-Cheltenham fares for first, second and parliamentary classes were
respectively ^i.o.o. 15s. od., and los. id., or return /1.14.0 and /i.6,o {no parliamentary return fare).
We are indebted to Mr J. E. Norris of the Railway Club, London, for this information.
t Robert Tomhnson, appointed in March 185S, was made Attendant for duty in the Spirit Room and
Store Rooms in 1865, where he attended to students and visitors, brought out and put away specimens,
painted and wrote labels on jars, and entered all recent additions into the Catalogues (BMNH.MS.Doc.
1 : 152). Altogether there w-ere ten Attendants in the Zoology Department at this time (BMNH.MS.Doc.
1:387).
78 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
touched with spirit as they appear to me to be merely paint unartistically
applied.
(undated, uith letters of 1876 but surely 1874, BMXH.MS.Z.)
This was one of the Zanzibar species listed by Gunther in the Fishes of Zanzibar
(Plaj^air & Gunther, 1867) and he had drawn particular attention to the blue lines
of this lutjanid as a feature distinguishing the species from the related M. fulvi-
flamma (both placed by Gunther in the genus Genyoroge). The impHcation was
obvious, especially as Giinther would have been responsible for having the colour
of the specimen restored (presumably for display purposes). Two small dry
specimens from Col. Plaj'fair's Zanzibar collection were entered into the students'
copy of Gunther's Catalogue under Genyoroge notata, but the largest (which still
retains faint blue lines) seems to have been varnished over the moribund colour
pattern and Day could not have objected to it. A larger dried specimen labelled
Genyoroge bengalensis, also a Playfair fish from Zanzibar, has the vivid blue lines
typical of this species (Liitjamis kasmira Forsskal) ; they have been enhanced by
paint and the specimen was obviously prepared for display. In fiis copy of the
Fishes of Zanzibar (Q 617), Day wrote against the species 'Russell's fish is a Meso-
prion the M. Riissellii (Bleeker) the G. notata is very distinct from this fish and
is evidently G. Bengalensis F Day'. Presumably this is the specimen in question,
but having synonjTnized notata with bengalensis, it is difficult to see why Day
should have objected to the characteristic blue lines, unless perhaps his recognition
of the synonjTny came much later.
In 1878, having written the final part of the Fishes of India, Day composed a
Preface in which he acknowledged the help he had received. Professor Peters
'most freely gave me access to the valuable contents of the magnificent collection
of fishes under his charge', while the late Dr Bleeker 'permitted me free access to
his invaluable fish' ; for Gunther, however, there was an even more insulting snub
than in the Fishes of Malabar :
Among the Officers at the British Museum, I must record mj' acknowledge-
ments to Professor Owen, C.B., Mr Winter Jones, and the late Dr J. E. Gray,
for such help as they were able to afford me to obtain free access to the Ichthyo-
logical collection.
Two years later, Gunther published his Introduction to the study of fishes (Gunther,
1880). In his Ust of 'Recent works' he spoke of the Fishes of India as being 'in
progress' and 'not yet complete', to which Day commented 'The last part was
pubhshed in 1878, when the India Office at my suggestion presented Dr Gunther
with a copy' (Q 483 - see also p. 68).
Completion of the Fishes of India did not bring any respite in the battle between
Day and Gunther, for Day had already begun his Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland
(1880-84) and it was still necessary to visit the British Museum. In August 1880
yet another quarrel erupted, this time over the artist Mintern. According to Day,
Gunther 'tried in 1874 to induce Mr Ford not to illustrate my Fishes of India! If
this is scientific, it appears to be a new phase of evolution' (Day to Peters,
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 79
8 November 1880, ZMB.MS.). It now appeared to Day that Giinther was using
the same tactics over Mintern.
Day had already decided to draw the specimens himself, but for the Uthography
he had employed C. Achilles (who had earher worked with Day on the plates for
the Fishes of India). By April 1880 Achilles had done over 50 of the fishes, but
unfortunately, as Day complained to Peters, 'he destroys specimens' (11 April
1880, ZMB.MS.). Could Peters let him have any specimens for such an artist,
for which Day offered a good exchange of British or Indian fishes. Achilles com-
pleted 66 plates before Day attempted to replace him by Mintern.
From the extant letters it is clear that Giinther had got wind of this. He no
doubt objected to Day's bland assumption of Mintern as 'my professional artist'
(Preface, Fishes of Great Britain) and, more important, he too planned a work on
British fishes for which Mintern was to be the artist. Giinther therefore wrote to
Mintern. How he worded it is not recorded, but Mintern thanked him for his
note about Day and said that Day had called in a few days ago with a request
and Mintern had declined to draw for him ; he was surprised at Day's 'disagree-
ableness' (17 August 1880, BMNH.MS.G. 15). As on previous occasions. Day
drafted a savage complaint immediately. His final version addressed to Edward
Bond, the Principal Librarian and Secretary to the Trustees, is dated 13 August
and begins with the familiar preamble 'I have unfortunately had reason to com-
plain several times respecting the obstructions Dr Giinther has thrown in my way
when examining Fishes in this Museum . . .' (13 August 1880, BMNH.MS.G. 15).
Day continued.
My artist [Achilles] for certain reasons cannot give me the illustrations as
rapidly as I require them and this day I went to my former artist Mr Mintern
and asked him if he would continue the work. He had dechned solely on this
reason that Dr Giinther had warned him not to do any work on British Fishes
for anyone as he proposes personally to write on the subject at some future
date . . . owing to Dr Giinther's jealousy and extreme fondness for obstruct-
ing myself in every way in his power I am stopped in my work by his
threatening my Artist. . . .
In Day's eyes, the whole matter was obviously a conspiracy. As he later wrote
to Peters, Mintern was the only fish artist in London and he had now been intimi-
dated by Gunther (8 November 1880, ZMB.MS.). Under the auspices of the
British Museum, Giinther had brought a great deal of work to Mintern and the
latter would certainly not suffer in any way by not drawing for Day.
Giinther, however, had his usual well-reasoned explanation (draft on back of
copy of Day's complaint, probably 14 August 18S0, BMNH.MS.G. 15). He said
that Mintern had alluded to 'a work on British Fishes, for which he had finished
for me already one plate, & had another in hand ... I felt bound to tell him I
had lately heard of Mr Day contemplating a similar work, and that I thought it
likely his services would be required by that gentleman . . .'. Although Giinther
claimed it might be some time before his own work went ahead, it would not be
8o P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
right for the same artist to illustrate the same species and perhaps the same
specimens for books on the same subject. Therefore,
I left Jlr M. at Liberty to act as he pleased ... I simply claim my right to
decUne for my work an artist who is engaged on a work of the same kind,
be it Mr Day or anybody else.
(Giinther to Owen, loc. cit.)
Edward Bond found this 'quite satisfactory - it being understood that there is no
threat of %vithdrawing Museum work from Mr Mintern on account of his executing
cuts for Mr Davies [Day intended] or other person wishing to employ him . . .'
(Bond to Giinther, iS August iSSo, BMNH.MS.G. 15).
Bond therefore wrote to Day that he had referred Day's letter to Giinther and
'as both you and he are engaged in preparing a publication on British Fishes, he
thinks it inconvenient and against the interests of either work that the same artist
should be employed on both. . . . This is a matter which cannot be considered
to concern the Trustees.' (20 August 1880, BMNH.MS.G. 15) In retahation, Day
stated in the Preface to the Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland that he had 'person-
ally deUneated every species from nature. Why I was unable to retain the ser\'ices
of my professional artist the subjoined letter . . . will explain.' He then appended
Bond's letter of 20 August as a footnote. As if to emphasize the insult, Giinther
received a letter from J. S. Keltic, the Editor of Nature, inviting him to review the
first part of the book and offering to send a copy should Giinther not possess one
(undated, BMNH.MS.G. 2). No review appeared and, as Theodore GUI noted in his
review of Giinther's Introduction to the study of fishes, the latter made no mention of
Day's book even though the first two parts had by then been published (GiU, 18S1).
In his reply to Bond's letter. Day could do no more than reiterate that 'almost
every obstacle Dr. Giinther has been able to throw in my way of examining the
collection of Fishes in the British Museum he has persistently employed for the
last few years ; and when I arrived in this country in 1874 ... he attempted to
prevent Mr Ford illustrating my work' (Day to Bond, 26 August 1880, a copy sent
down to Giinther by John Taylor, Assistant Keeper in the Director's Office, BMNH.
MS.G. 15). Mintern remained loyal to Giinther and the other 113 plates were
drawn by Day, Uthographed by A. Hammond and printed by M. & N. Hanhart
of Charlotte Street, London ; the earlier plates by Achilles (but all drawn by Day)
were printed by Mintern Brothers.
The affair lay fallow through September, but in mid-October Day renewed the
attack. He went to see the Principal Librarian and charged that Giinther was
in fact employing artists privately but using them during official hours. Here,
surely, was a matter for the Trustees. Bond sent down to Giinther Day's written
accusations and said that he had dispatched a note to Day 'desiring him to prove
his charge of your misemployment of Official time or to withdraw it with apologies'.
(Bond to Giinther, 14 October 1880, BMNH.MS.G. 15) Day obviously rehshed
this opportunity, for he sent five folio pages describing how Giinther 'passes official
time in non-official work', such as his projected British Fishes, the Challenger
Report, some encyclopaecha and related work, and the fishes of the Godeffroy
FRANCIS DAY {1S29-18S9) 81
Museum ; Giinther could intimidate artists because of the power he had over them
in handing out a considerable body of work 'due to the sanction, I assume, he has
received from the Trustees of engaging in private and non-official work during
official hours' (Day to Bond, i6 October 1880, BMNH.MS.G. 15).
This was not the first time that such an accusation had been levelled at Giinther.
Ten years earlier O'Shaughnessy had mentioned in passing that '1 have corrected
proofs & rewritten numbers of Papers, articles &c (not Museum work) in Museum
time for Dr Giinther . . .' (O'Shaughnessy to Lord Lytton, 4 November 1870,
Knebworth Archives, cited by Paden, 1964a : 18). What Day may not have
realized - but O'Shaughnessy would have known - was that Giinther's official day
ended at 3 p.m. (Official Diary, BMNH.MS.G. 3). Giinther must frequently have
worked long after this on official projects, certainly in summer when the hght was
good, and probably felt justified in setting private work off against this. At any
rate, he seems to have extricated himself fairly easily, for Day later reported to
Peters that he had 'handed up the question to the Principal Librarian who decides
it is not official but a matter for Dr Giinther's private feelings so he will not inter-
fere' (8 November 1S80, ZMB.MS.). Giinther's private feeUngs seem to have been
that this was yet one more of those 'insane attacks' on him for which Day had
'rendered himself notorious' (BMNH.MS.G. 2 -see p. 106).
Day's complaints of the obstructions that he encountered at the British Museum
were levelled almost solely at his rival. It is interesting to speculate whether Day
ever came across a certain Stefan Poles, author of a pamphlet entitled The actual
condition of the British Museum (Poles, 1875), since this 'Uterary e.Kpostulation',
written in the same period as Day's battles, echoes the spirit of frustration that
many visitors to the Museum must have felt. Poles' diatribe, well written and
apparently well informed, dealt largely with the mismanagement and with the
injustices to junior staff and to visitors perpetrated by the more senior library
staff ('a clique of jobbing ignoramuses'), with particular venom reserved for Winter
Jones, the Principal Librarian ('a kind of literary Mrs Squeers'). At a time when
he was pleading to see an up-dated catalogue of the fishes - after nearly ten years
of contact with the Museum - Day would surely have agreed that the British
Museum and the Vatican 'vie with each other in decrees hostile to progress and
enlightenment'.
By now the bitterness between Day and Giinther would seem to preclude any
normal communication between them. Yet, in 1883 Day showed a wilUngness
to give specimens to the British Museum and he made the offer direct to Giinther.
In addition, the Museum, which had declined to buy Day's main collection in
1875, now had a fleeting opportunity to purchase Day's No. 2 collection. The
occasion was the Great International Fisheries E.xhibition held on the site just
behind the present British Museum (Natural History) (then recently built and
engaging most of Giinther's time in transferring and arranging the collections).
Day was the obvious choice as Commissioner for the Indian Department of the
exhibition and he filled the Indian Court with a representative selection of Indian
fishes and examples of fishing gear. In the Catalogue of the exhibits in the Indian
Section (Day, 1883), he explained that much of the material had been sent by
82 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
John Anderson of the Calcutta Museum, George Bidie of the Madras Central
Museum and Dr D. McDonald of the Victoria and Albert Museum in Bombaj-
(thus representing the three Presidencies). However, the Secretary of State also
authorized Day to exhibit some of his own spirit-presers-ed specimens and Day
included no less than Sio species (Day, 18S3).
Towards the end of the Exhibition, which had begun in May, Day wrote to
Giinther invdting 'some competent person' to select from the official exhibits any
that might be of interest to the British Museum (18 October 1883, BMNH.MS.Z.).
Unfortunately - but perhaps ine\dtably - this scheme was to be the vehicle for
yet another quarrel. A new member of the Zoology Department, G. A. Boulenger
(1858-1937), had been appointed to serve on Jurj' No. 26 and, as luck would have
it, it was this Jury which severely (and in Day's opinion, most unjustly) criticized
the Indian exhibits and in particular John Anderson's stuffed cyprinid fishes from
Calcutta. Day took immediate offence and requested that the specimens 'be not
considered presented to the British Museum until further notice . . . which I
do not now anticipate will be accorded' (Day to Gunther, 8 November 1S83, BMNH.
MS.Z.). Gunther replied and Day acknowledged his letter but expressed little
doubt that the specimens for the British Museum would be withdrawn once he
had reported 'the manner in which the Calcutta carps have been treated by Jury
No 26, wliich comprised one of your staff . . .' (11 November 1S83, BMNH.MS.Z.).
Giinther evidently sent a hast}' and concUiatorj- letter in which he pointed out
that the ill-fated Jury No. 26 had reached their decision on a day when Boulenger
had been absent ; for his part he was quite satisfied with the condition of the
Calcutta fishes. Mollified, Day repHed that 'Your opinion respecting the stuffing
of the Indian fishes quite effaces the award of Jury 26 and I will therefore request
you to consider my letters cancelled' (15 November 1883, BMNH.MS.Z.).*
In the end, the Museum received 100 stuffed and 27 spirit-preserved specimens
from the Secretary of State for India. These were not part of Day's own collection,
but it was during the Exhibition that Day negotiated the sale of his second best
series of specimens, not to the British Museum but to the Australian Museum in
Sydney (see below, p. 144). There seems little doubt that this collection would
have been offered to Gunther had circumstances been otherwise, its purchase by
Sydney perhaps being merely consequent on the proximity of the Indian and Aus-
tralian Courts and the opportunity of being able to commiserate on the iniquity
of Jury No. 26.
Earl}' the next year. Day wrote again to Gunther, this time to say that he pro-
posed 'dividing the Zoological specimens in the China Court [which adjoined the
Indian Court] next week. As I should wish to first know what are desiderata for
the Natural History Museum I should be obliged by your selecting such forms as
you require prior to the general division being made.' (6 January 1884, BMNH.
MS.Z.) Day proposed meeting Gunther in the China Court the following Monday,
but the highly efficient postal services of those daysf brought the letter to Gunther
• In fact, the exhibit gained a gold medal (Anon., 1884 : 461), so presumably Giinther or Boulenger
managed to annul the earlier verdict.
t Letters and their replies between Giinther and Day often bear the same date, even when Day went
to live in Cheltenham ; within London it was possible to receive an answer to the reply on that same day.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 83
the following day (Monday) and Gunther waited in the China Court in vain (inferred
from Day's apology, BMNH.MS.Z.). The selection was made, however, and the
British Museum received 89 Chinese fishes (BMNH.1884.2.26.1-89).
After 1876, Day's visits to the British Museum were less frequent, at least to
judge from his requests to Gunther (which were phrased no less formally than
those of a decade earlier). On one occasion he was bold enough to demand to 'go
through the Spirit collection of Salmonidae' (14 May 1885, BMNH.MS.Z.), but
usually a list of species was enclosed. He made eight visits in 1882, five the next
year, then four, three, six, two and finally four in 1888. He usually arrived at
ten or half-past on a Tuesday morning and appears to have stayed at Rawlings
Hotel in Jermyn Street when in London, sometimes returning to the Museum on
the Wednesday. Mostly he was preoccupied with salmonids and British fishes,
or with the revision of the Fishes of India.
Meanwhile, he had not forgotten Giinther's 'theft' of the artist Mintern. It still
rankled and in 1887, seven years after the affair, Day found an opportunity to
revive it. In the Preface to his British and Irish Salmonidae (18S7 : vii) he again
quoted Bond's letter of 20 August 1880, this time as being 'my apology for the
illustrations [of salmonids], having been drawn by myself. He went further,
adding
Seven years have now elapsed since Dr Gunther, Keeper of the Zoological Collec-
tion of the British Museum, induced Mr Mintern to break his agreement and
cease engraving for me on the above plea. Dr Giinther's work, stated then
to be in the course of preparation, has not yet been advertised !
Gunther never produced such a book, but a bound manuscript of 332 fohos in
the Linnean Society library, London, throws some light on his intentions. The title
page is neatly headed 'Guide to an elementary knowledge of British Fishes By
Albert C. L. G. Giinther M.A., Ph.D., M.D., F.R.S.' The manuscript is undated
but reference is made to Day's British fishes (1S80-84) and also to his salmonid
book (1887). However, the descriptions of fishes that comprise the bulk of the
book may be fair copies that were brought up to date in later years. There is a
Preface which states the object of the book to be first, a means of identifying species,
and second.
To serve as a prodromus for a more extended and fully illustrated work, for
which materials have been collected for many years, and for which the first
illustrations were actually prepared as far back as 1S70.
That this last remark was for Day's benefit seems almost certain from the many
subsequent references to Day in the te.xt, e.g. under Raja maculala (f. 43), Pagellus
centrodontus (f. 87), Echeneis reinora (f. 125), Trachinus vipera (f. 12S) and especially
among the salmonids. Under Salmo Gunther wrote.
Note. - It is not my intention, and in the present work it would be out of place
to enter into a discussion of arguments - if statements devoid of fresh evidence
can be so termed - that have been brought forward by the author of the 'Fishes
of Great Britain and Ireland' against my method of the treatment of British
84 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Salmonoids. Those whose duty it may be in future years to compare my
writings with those of my opponent, may perceive the extent to which they
have been distorted.
The argument chiefly revolved around the taxonomic status of the numerous
races, varieties and species of salmonids and the vahie of the characters used to
separate them. Day (1880-84 • 59) found most of the characters used at that
time to be 'fallacious' and he thus advocated recognition of rather few species but
a number of varieties. Giinther favoured the opposite tactic and in his Catalogue
(vol. 6), as well as in the Linnean Society MS., he gave as distinct species what Day
considered mere varieties (83 species of Salmo, in two subgenera, in the Catalogue).
Although subsequent work has leant towards Day's solution, there is still room
for argument about the degree of genetical isolation between the various races in
this highly complex group of fishes.
Early in 1891 an opportunity arose for Giinther to publish his 'Guide to British
Fishes'. He received a letter from Macmillan & Co. asking him to give an opinion
on a proposed 'Handbook of the Fishes of Western Europe' to be written for them
b\' the man who was to become America's greatest ichthyologist, David Starr
Jordan (19 January 1891, BMNH.MS.G. 24). In a letter whose tone recalls the
one that damned Day's Fishes of Malabar nearly thirty years before, Giinther
conceded that Jordan was 'a very conscientious writer on iththyolog. matters',
but his rather small ichthyological collections forced him to be a compiler from the
work of others. More serious, however, was the fact that Jordan was 'an adherent
of the rules of zoolog. nomenclature established by American naturalists to super-
cede the nomenclature followed in Europe', which would confuse and perplex non-
specialist European readers. But in any event, assured Giinther, there was no
demand for such a book on European fishes. What was badly needed was a hand-
book on British fishes 'but I cannot see that Mr Jordan should undertake it'.
However,
I think it, under the circumstances, only right to inform you that I have such
a work in hand, and hope to complete it in the present year.
(Giinther to Macmillans, 21 January 1891, BMNH.MS.G. 24)
Not unnaturally, Macmillans took Gflnther's advice and declined Jordan's pro-
posed book, in the same breath gladly accepting Giinther's book should he not
have a pubhsher in mind (23 January i8gi, BMNH.MS.G. 24). Giinther expressed
his gratification at the confidence that they had shown him and promised the
book by the end of the year (draft, 26 January 1891, BMNH.MS.G. 24). A year
later came a gentle hint from the publishers (28 January 1891), to which Giinther
answered that about 'three fourths of the M.S. of my Synopsis of British Fishes
are done' and he promised completion by April (draft, 16 January 1892, BMNH.
MS.G. 24). Another year went by and with another enquiry from Macmillans
Giinther sent the manuscript as it stood (draft, 13 February 1893, BMNH.MS.G. 24).
Macmillans even agreed to bear the cost of the 250 figures (24 February 1893,
BMNH.MS.G. 24) and a contract was drawn up, Giinther pencilling on the
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 85
accompanying letter 'I push on illstr. so as to be ready in May' (27 February 1893,
BMNH.MS.G. 24).
For some reason, the final fourth was never written. The book would in no sense
have been a rival to Day's, being as Macmillans put it 'rather more of a mere cata-
logue than we had supposed', although with illustrations they could see a 'fair
sale among naturalists' (15 February 1893, BMNH.MS.G. 24). When Giinther
had first been approached. Day's British Fishes could hardly have been called out of
date, but there was probably a place for a smaller and less expensive handbook or
guide. This need did not diminish during Giinther's lifetime and since the terms
of the contract with Macmillans were quite favourable (half the profits), the reason
why Giinther failed to finish the book must remain a mystery.
Quarrels such as those over Mintern or access to the collections or the book on
British fishes are one thing. Provided that enough evidence exists, it is possible
to comment on the ethics of the two contestants. The battle in the literature is
more difficult, but one must admit that Day sometimes dismissed Giinther's views
without fairly stating them and without a clear rebuttal. Giinther, on the other
hand, was equally guilty and especially in his earlier comments in the Zoological
Record. It is an example of the frequent conflict between specialists in which
emotional issues disrupt scientific dispute. To some extent emotional involve-
ment can stimulate scientific activity, but from the time of Francis Bacon emotion
has been regarded with distrust. Whatever spur it may have provided for either
Gunther or Day, the verdict a century later must be that these twenty quarreUing
years were quite unworthy of two such talented ichthyologists.
PERSONAL, MEDICAL AND OTHER AFFAIRS
Although very little of the material examined here touches upon Day's personal
life, it has seemed worthwhile to include it, partly for the light that it throws on
Day's personahty (which is of obvious interest in the context of the quarrel with
Giinther) ; partly because it adds substance to the story of his career ; and partly
also because so much of the material, and especially that in Cheltenham, is in the
form of undated and obscure references or worse, practically illegible drafts, that
could well be overlooked by a future biographer. The paucity of references to his
two wives or to his children probably reflects the nature of the material, the bulk
of which comprises letters, cuttings and documents assembled for ichthyological
purposes ; any personal items are fortuitous.
In 1849, during Day's first year at St George's Hospital, his father died and his
mother took over management of the estate (Day, A., 1928 : 53), his eldest brother
William Ansell being only 23 and articled to a solicitor (LSRSD.) and his next
brother (Edmund, aet. 21) studying mining (see Appendix). The following 3'ear
his brother Henry went up to Cambridge (see Appendix), while the youngest brother,
Charles, and his young sisters Mary and Alice remained at home. None seems to have
been willing to make farming a career and although William came down to Hadlow
House from London at weekends and showed some interest in the tied cottages, he
86 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AXD P. K. TALWAR
continued as a solicitor (Day, A., 1928).* Edmund joined the Australian gold rush
in about 1851, Francis left for India in 1S52, Henry took Holy Orders and followed a
teaching career, and Charles set out for Canada (see Appendix). Alice, the last of the
famil\- to be born in Hadlow House, was only a few months old when her father died,
but she evidently developed a great love of fanning hfe and many j'ears later
recorded anecdotes by farmers and others recaUing the times when the Days were
at Jlaj-held (Day, A., 1928) ; unfortunately, there are disappointingly few references
to members of the family.
As already noted, we know almost nothing of Francis Day's early years in India.
His first leave in England was on sick certificate (ten months from 6 March 1857,
but apparently he oversta3'ed until at least 20 April 1S58 (0 646, 647) and was back
at his station on 5 June - LPR.). His address in England was 7 Harrington Street
North, Hampstead, London (LS., proposal form), at least in June, for in November
he gave his address on his marriage licence as 'Basingstoke'. We do not know when
or where he met Emma, daughter of Dr Edward Covey of the Shrubbery, Basingstoke,
but they were married on 3 November at the Parish Church, one of the witnesses
being Emma's sister Fanny (GRO. ; DNB. incorrectly gives Emma's father as
'Charles'). Emma w-as 21 and Day 28. It is suggestive that a Dr WilUam Henry
Covey was practising at Uckfield, only a few miles from the Day family home at
Hadlow, in 1845 (Anon., 1846 : 115) ; he had quahfied in 1826 and he died in 1878
(GRO.) and so could well have been a brother of Edward Covey. Since another
branch of the Day family lived in Uckfield House (Hussey, 1966 : 81), it seems most
likely that the Daj's and the Coveys knew each other.
Daj' seems to have moved down from London to Basingstoke, for in April of the
follo%\ing year he translated from the French, probably for his own benefit, three
medical essays by J.-Ch. M. Boudin (military health, geography, geology-) and he
signed the books 'Francis Daj^ April loth [also 20th] Basingstoke Hants.' (Q 646,
647). The writing is very small and neat, covering 181 pages, with tabulated data
neatly inserted, but there is no record that it was published. During the early
part of 1858 (and possibly late the previous year) Day was attached to the East
India Company's training depot at Warley, near Brentwood on the outskirts of
London (see above, p. 22). Since he was due to return to India in February', it
would not be surprising if Day had engineered this temporary posting in order to
spend a few extra months of his early married Hfe in England ; or, alternatively, to
supplement his leave pay.
At some time after 20 April Day and his wife made their return to India by the
overland route (LPR.) and stayed first at Hyderabad and later (from late 1858 or
early 1859) moved to Cochin, where Day was appointed Civil Surgeon (EIRA.,
MAL.). Their daughter Fanny Laura Charlotte was born on 24 November 1861,
• According to some notes made by Day's grandson, Reginald Egerton, from a letter written by
Day's niece Mabel Beaumont (13 September 1921-in Eg. 2), complications arose over the family
estate. The house grounds and home farm were left to William Ansell, the remainder to be sold and
the proceeds divided. William .Vnsell. who wanted to keep the estate together, bought out his brothers
Edmund and Henry for a rather small sum, but Francis Day insisted on a proper payment, which
caused a breach between them. In the event, William .Vnsell failed to satisfy his brothers and sisters
and a lawsuit resulted in the sale of the whole property.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 87
presumably at Cochin (FRMMF.). A picture of Cochin at this time was given by
Day in his paper on the medical topography of the town and its surroundings (Day,
iS6ib, 1862). He admitted that it 'must be designated a healthy place', but he was
highly critical of the sanitary conditions of the town and commented that the Police,
were they to implement the new Police Act (1861) in the spirit in which it had been
framed, could do much to improve the health of the station ; between the lines one
reads something of Day's unsuccessful attempts to elicit any enthusiasm for this
task from the Police. Day also found the moral state of the 'heathen (at least)' to
be quite lamentable. The paper shows Day's increasing interest in natural history
(lists of plants and animals from the area), and it seems to have been a trial run for
his much more ambitious Land of the Permmds, pubUshed in 1863 (see below, p. 88).
A recurrent theme throughout the early part of Day's career in India was sickness,
either his own and his wife's, or health problems in the regiments to which he was
attached. At Cochin, however, he was in charge of the Civil Dispensary and his
patients were principally civilians. They came from all strata of Indian society and
he designated himself Medical Officer to H.H. the Rajah of Cochin (Q 650, vol. i ;
also Fishes of Malabar, title page). His medical duties are well described in his
report for i860 (Day, i86ia). They ranged from dispensing the pitifuUy ineffective
drugs of the day for fevers, dysentery and venereal diseases, to post-mortem
identifications of abandoned children and amputations in cases of elephantiasis
(the success of which Day was justly proud - Day, 1860b).
Most of Day's medical papers date from this period in Cochin, a major topic being
fevers. In the i86o's nothing was known of the causes of malaria and the Europeans
in India were virtually defenceless against it. Day made a particular study of
tropical fevers, of which malarial fevers seemed to predominate, and he presented
his results in a series of papers to the Indian Annals of Medical Science for the
benefit of his colleagues in India. His earliest paper (Day, 1856) dates from when
he was 'suddenly sent to the 12th M.N.I, at Bangalore, May 14th 1855, then
suffering severly from fever . . .' and here he attempted to relate the number of
attacks and their severity to three types of temperament, the Phlegmatic, the
Sanguineous and the Bilious (the workman-like tabulation and analysis of the data
beUe the rather mediaeval flavour of the subject). Later, during ten months with
the Hyderabad Contingent (3rd Regiment of Infantry), Day compared fevers of the
Deccan with those of Bellary and Mysore (Day, 1857, 1858a) and during his leave
of 1857-58 he sent off a third paper (Day, 1858b) in which he tested the theory then
in dispute that malarial fevers were in some way influenced by the moon. Carefully
tabulating malaria records against lunar periods, he found a preponderance of
admissions to the hospital, and a greater severity of the attacks, at the time of the
full moon ; also, there were noticeably more admissions in the period three days
before the full or the new moon than in the three days after. In Cochin after his
leave Day set out to summarize all that was known of the fevers and agues that so
bedevilled the Europeans in India (Day, 1859a, b, 1860a) ; in fact, he had already
published a similar summary in the Lancet (Day, 1858c). Fevers were the
commonest of all diseases in India and about 35 per cent of the European troops
were affected annually in the Madras Army. Day could do no more than
88 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
recommend that 'European Regiments, when marching through a malarious countr\',
should not be exposed more to early morning or night air than is a\'oidable ; each
man should have a cup of coffee, before starting, the same half way, and warm
congee or rice gruel on reaching the encamping ground. Natives should also be
advised not to go out with an empty stomach'.
This may seem naive, but Day and his fellow surgeons were grapphng with a
disease whose aetiology was unknown, whose symptoms were often confusing, and
whose prevention or cure rested hesitantly on quinine, arsenic and, with less
popularity, mercurj-. An air-borne agent seemed likely, but it was not untU 1880
that the malarial parasite was found in the human host, and it was another twentv
years before the anopheline mosquito was proved to be the vector. Day's contribu-
tion was to bring his excellent analytical mind to the problem and, although
hampered by a faulty premise, he did his best to subject current theories to rational
scrutiny.
Day had a considerable talent for gathering information. It shows in his papers
on fevers, in his work on the Kumool cholera epidemic (Day, 1866), in his fishery
work in Burma and the Andaman Islands, and most particularly in his large book
(over five hundred pages) entitled Land of the Permauls (Day, 1863). In this latter
work he attempted a complete description of Cochin, its geology and geography, its
administration and history, its animal and plant Ufe, its economic hfe, and the
languages, customs and manners of the many different ethnic groups that lived
there. The chapter on fishes (pp. 487-519) is no more fully worked than those on
birds, reptiles, mammals or plants, but it gives a clue to the kind of confidence that
Day felt in deciding to write up a scientific paper of the fishes of the area. The book
received a long and glowing re\-iew in the Madras Quarterly Journal of Medical
Science (Anon., 1863). Day could not but have felt elated ; if he could make useful
contributions to so many subjects, what was there to stop him exploring any one of
these in greater detail ?* The book also gives a clue to the kind of man with whom
Giinther had to deal in 1865 : a young doctor of thirty-six, a year older than Giinther,
who had an excellent general knowledge (albeit limited to one small part of the world)
but who now wanted to compete in a field that was rapidly becoming the province
of speciaHsts.
During their stay in Cochin (1859-64) neither Day nor his wife enjoyed good
health. In a letter to a Mr Blackmore (quoted more fully below) Day spoke of their
desire to return to England for health reasons (Q 654). Since Day was entitled to
(and was later granted) ten months' sick leave, it was probably his \vife who most
needed to recuperate. Even after seven months of leave, however. Day was still
not sufficiently recovered (letter to Denison, see p. 25 above) and he successfully
applied for an additional six months of sick leave. In fact, he remained in England
for almost two years (March 1864 to Februarj' 1866). In early 1865, C. A. Lawson,
editor of the Madras Times, wrote to Day regretting to hear of Emma's continued
* In its scope. Day's Land of the Permauls resembles Bleeker's book on the Moluccas (Bleeker. 1856),
although Bleeker's stay was very much shorter (September and October 1855). Day's eldest brother
William Ansell seems also to have had this talent for collecting and synthesizing a wide range of material,
judging from his book on Poland (Day, W., 1867).
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 89
ill health and hoping that 'j'ou will not think of moving her from England this year'
(26 January 1865, O 654). In none of the letters is the nature of the illness
mentioned, but it seems to have lingered on throughout Day's leave and later
during their stay at Ootacamund in 1866. Chipperfield, for example, hoped that
'the hill residence has been conducive to the health of both Mrs Day and yourself
(4 August 1866, 654), while Day's plea to Shaw that his wife was not fit for the
move to Kurnool in August 1S66 has already been mentioned (p. 39). Following
Day's secondment for fishery surveys in May 1868 (see p. 43), his life in India was
henceforth extremely active, if it had not been before, but further evidence of poor
health is his sick leave of February to September 1870 (recalled before his fuU
ten months had expired - LPR.). A subsequent letter from the Rev. Stockdale
(i January 1874, Q 658) enquired after his health and implied that he had still been
ill on his return from leave in 1872 and during 1873. In fact, all of Day's leaves in
England were under sick certificate (1857-58, 1864-66, 1870), except for the dash to
England in 1872 to get married. The entitlement for sick leave was a maximum of
eighteen months at any one time (Crawford, 1914 : 415-417 ; also lACSL., July
1866), which Day overstepped by six months when permitted to postpone the trout
experiment (Chipperfield, however, was granted twenty months in 1868 - MAL. for
1869). Leave on private affairs of two years was granted after ten years of service
and again when a further ten years had been completed (exclusive of the leave)
(lACSL., July 1866). Nowadays, few expatriates could be recruited on such terms
and it is tempting to wonder if there was not some leniency in the granting of sick
certificates in Day's time. The examination for the certificate was conducted by a
board comprising Madras surgeons, largely from the Medical College and thus well
known to Day. This is not to impty that Day mahngered - the concern of his
friends is genuine enough - but that the beneficial effects of a spell away from the
tropics, whether for physical, cultural or spiritual reasons, were at that time all
placed within the province of health.
Shortly after the Days arrived back in England in 1864, their son Francis
Meredith was born (18 April 1864, FRMMF.). For a time they Hved at Elm Lodge
in East Sheen, London, but in October 1864 they moved to Andover Lodge in
Cheltenham (BMNH.MS.Z. ; 654). Day does not seem to have had any previous
links with Cheltenham and the choice may have been determined by Emma. The
Rector of Alderton and of Great Washbourne (both about 13 km north of Chelten-
ham) was the Rev. Charles Covey (1795 -1875), who was succeeded as Rector by his
son Charles Rogers Covey (1829- 1918) ; it is significant that the latter had a
brother Edward Rogers Covey (1831-1904) who died at Mayfield and thus only a
short distance from the Day family home at Hadlow Down (Venn, 1944 : 155, and
Cheltenham Public Library, in litt). Emma's father (Dr Edward Covey) and the
Rev. Charles Covey (senior) were contemporaries and perhaps first cousins (their
fathers being Charles and William respectively).
The lease on Andover Lodge was for a year only and in October 1865 the Days
moved down to the Isle of Wight prior to returning to India early the following year.
One address given by Day is Cumberland House, St Thomas Street, Ryde (in ink,
dated 15 December 1865, Q 602). He also gave a second address, care of the Rev.
go P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
F. Stockdale, Havenstreet, Ryde (printed label, Q651), which suggests more
permanency than a mere N^sit to friends. Possibly Day met the Stockdales through
the Coveys. The Rev. Frederick Stockdale {1827-1915) had been appointed
Curate of St Peter's at Havenstreet three years earlier, having for the ten previous
years been Curate at ALkborough in Lincolnshire (\'^enn, 1954 : 46), a part of the
countr\' \\ith which Day had no connexions. There were, however, a number of
Coveys Uving in the Southampton area (GRO.), including perhaps another uncle of
Emma's. At all events, the friendship with the Stockdales was firm enough for
the Days to leave their children there when they returned to India three months
later and for Frederick and Kate Stockdale to be remembered by Day in his Will.
Probably written at about this time, but in an undated draft beginning merely
'My Dear Sir', Day apologized for not waiting before about the scheme for creating
cinchona plantations in the Nilgiri HiUs,* 'but I was very hard pressed collecting
trout ova for Madras and subsequently setthng my children in the Isle of Wight'
(0 654) . Fanny was then four years old and young Francis nearly two and they
would have been eight and six by the time of Day's next visit to England in 1870 on
sick leave. By then there was also Edith Mary to care for (born 30 October 1867 -
FRMMF.), and possibly this is when Day first employed Fanny Juha Faithful as
governess for the children (also mentioned in his WUl). Certainly, there were
European children at Kurnool (Q 659) and Chipperfield had his children in Madras
(Q659), but it was not uncommon for them to be left in England for reasons of
health or schooling. f Emma's poor health may well have been another factor in
deciding to leave the children behind, although the decision cannot have been easy.
Their five months at Ootacamund during the period of the trout and fish stocking
experiments (mid-March to late August 1866) must have been a welcome alternative
to the heat of Madras, for Ooty in the i86o's was fast gaining its reputation as the
pleasantest hUl station in the south. Denison was the first to moot an annual
migration of Government to the Xilgiris and he usually managed six weeks or more
at Ootacamund during the summer. In addition to his promotion of the trout
scheme, he was also responsible for the systematic plantation of blue gum trees for
fuel and the establishment of the Government cinchona plantations (Price, 1908 : 55).
Denison's proposal for an official migration was turned down by the Secretary of
State, but it was renewed by Lord Napier and in July 1870 the Governor and his
retinue made their first official escape from a Madras August. At 2240 m above
sea level, Ootacamund even at this date boasted English oaks, Scots pines, gorse
bushes on the downs, weeping wiUows by the lake, and gardens fuU of roses, helio-
trope, geraniums and violets, not to mention strawberries, raspberries, apples and
* Since the discovery in the 1630's of the medicinal properties of Cinchona officinalis or 'Jesuits' bark',
various attempts had been made to cultivate the tree outside South America and in the early part of the
nineteenth century the East India Company was urged to make the attempt. In 1S59 the India Office
commissioned Sir Clements Markham to collect Cinchona in the eastern .\ndes and to superintend its
acclimatization in India. The Nilgiris, as also Ceylon and Darjeeling, were considered suitable sites
and in the i86o's plantations were successfully established (Ramsbottom, 1931).
t For example, John Russell Reeves was 23 before he went out to Canton to join his father John
Reeves, who had worked there for the East India Company since 1812 with only two periods of leave
(Whitehead, 1970 : 195). Rudyard Kipling was another who was sent back at a young age to escape
the fatal Indian heat and his feelings on this come out in the book Baa, baa. Black Sheep, a tragic story
of two Anglo-Indian children separated from their parents.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1S89) 91
pears. Lord Lytton asked his wife to 'imagine Hertfordshire lanes, Devonshire
downs, Westmorland lakes and Scotch trout streams', while Edward Lear, who
visited Ooty in 1874, found it 'so English as to be, I think, undrawable'. Panter-
Downes (1967) recreates a vivid picture of Victorian Ooty and Price (1908) gives a
detailed history of the town (with a brief mention of Day, p. 36). Both show old
drawings and photographs and there are in the India Office Library twenty-six
paintings by Captain George Bellasis, of which two (St Stephen's Church in 1851
and the Ootacamund Club in 1852) were reproduced by Archer (1969 : pis 15, 16).
During the latter part of their time in the Nilgiris, Emma Day kept a journal
(Eg. i). Much of it is devoted to anecdotes and newspaper cuttings, but for a
month (18 July to 23 August 1866) Emma wrote a daily account of their life at
Ootacamund. For the first four days they were at the Government bungalow at
Kulhutty, where Day sampled the streams around Seegor and Billicul for fishes for
the Ootacamund lake, but on the 21st they returned to the Fern Hill hotel in
Ootacamund (where Denison had stayed the previous year - Price, 1908:55).
They disliked it, however, and on the 23rd moved to Sylk's Hotel, 'a wretched little
place ... all very small cold & damp . . . can never make a servant hear when he is
wanted & the food miserable. We are certainly as regards rooms attendants &
food out of the frying pan into the fire' (p. 25). To their relief after three days they
came upon Rose Cottage and rented it until the beginning of October (at Rs 70 a
month). Emma spent a happy morning shopping for a dinner service, pots, pans
and oddments and the next day exclaimed 'In our own house again ! What years
it seems since we had one at Ryde [presumably Cumberland House] & our darlings
were with us ! - yet in reality it is only five months & a half. Rose Cottage is a
snug little place' (pp. 29, 30).
That the children had been left with the Stockdales is confirmed by many
references in the journal (all the more poignant when it is remembered that Emma
was never to see them again).
Saturday - July 28th. Found the letters from the Madras Mail. One from
Mrs Stockdale - the darlings are quite well - Baby [Francis Meredith] has
just cut the first of his four last double teeth. (p. 38)
Monday -July 30th. Began netted necktie for darling Fan .... (p. 40)
Wednesday - Aiigs' 8th one from Mrs Stockdale & Dolly [Emma's
sister]. The former gives a good account of the darlings, excepting that the
heat has rather knocked up Fanny . . . Dolly & Minnie [another sister] have
been to see them & think them greatly improved, especially Baby . . . Nurse
has been giving trouble. (p. 48)
Thursday - Angs' gth. Frank requested to send a P O to Mrs Stockdale of 25/ s
five each for the darlings to buy toys with - & 15/ s for Nurse to buy herself
some small token of our approbation if she is behaving herself properly &
deserves it - this I have explained to Mrs Stockdale fully. (p. 49)
Emma found Ootacamund unpleasantly cold and wet. She complained 'v\-e
couldn't get warm' (p. 23), 'Very wet & cold - when will it be fine ? The damp
92 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
weather causes unnumerable fleas to appear everywhere in Ooty making people
miserable night & day' (p. 42), 'Natives all looking most miserable' (p. 53) and ''Sly
hands & feet quite frozen' (p. 54). She evidently was not strong and felt 'quite
knocked up' after the shopping and moving into Rose Cottage. Yet she frequently
rode out with her husband to collect fish or to stock them into the lake or rivers and
she led a busy social life, pa\dng frequent calls on her neighbours. She knew the
vernacular names of the fishes that they were bringing up for stocking and she gave
motherly care to those placed in tubs and awaiting transfer the next day. Her
interest and pride in her husband's work is clear.
When the order to transfer to Kurnool arrived (22 August) Emma was in bed
recovering from a bad cold and Day was out planting fish in the Pykara river.
Emma read the order and in her journal confided her fears.
. . . fancy that horrid cholera hole Kurnool - and to get there we must pass
through all the cholera districts - it's a great doubt if we go, if we ever return
aUve - then how unfair to send away Frank .... All morning I was in despair.
(p. 58)
When Day returned and heard the bad news he immediately set off to see the
Commander-in-Chief, General Sir John Gaspard de Marchant 'to get him to
intercede' and was granted a day's reprieve while the matter was looked into. He
then had an inter\dew with the Adjutant-General, Colonel James Primrose, and it
was not a success :
... he turned quite green like a chameleon when he saw him and was indignant
at his having been to the Chief's. (p. 59)
At this rather tense point the journal suddenly breaks off and for the ne.xt twenty
pages are retold various trivial anecdotes and snippets of army gossip, beneath
which a source is given (usually 'Frank'). Finally, Emma returned to the Kurnool
transfer for two pages (23 August). Day went to see Colonel Primrose again 'who
received him very civilly . . . said it was very unfair . . . chatted very aimiably' and
advised him to apply to the General's Secretarj-, Colonel John Fordyce. The last
entry reads 'What passed in Frank's interview with the Governor, & the results are
given in the volume labelled Kurnool - Madras Jan^' 1867' (p. 95). The latter is the
Cheltenham volume Q 659 and its contents have been described already (see p. 37).
Emma was one of six children, of whom Fanny and Minnie were (unwittingly) to
prove a headache for Day at the time of his transfer to Kurnool (see below, p. loi).
In fact, the Covey family seems to have posed other difficulties for Day, chiefly
in the interpretation and implementation of the will of Dr Edward Covey, Day's
father-in-law. He died at his home in Basingstoke in 1861 (28 August - GRO.), while
Day was at Cochin, at the comparatively young age of 56. No will is recorded
(SH.) for this or the next six years, so perhaps he died intestate ; this would have
entailed an exact division of the estate between his children, which is where the
difficulties arose. In an almost unreadable draft to one of the Executors, Day
announced that he was coming up to London to see 'the vouchers respecting all the
payments made on account of the estate of the late Mr C [E substituted in another
hand] Covey at Basingstoke - together with the inventory of his personal property
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 93
at the time of death ... I will bring with me the accounts I have already received
but I must observe that they are by no means in a lucid state' (undated draft,
post-October 1864 ?, Q 654). By December 1864 Day had engaged a Mr Blackmore
as his sohcitor, being dissatisfied with the way that this Executor was handhng the
division of the estate. To Blackmore, Day pointed out that, under the terms of the
will, a copy of which he had only lately been able to obtain, 'everything should have
been divided amongst his six children of whom my wife was one' and that until his
return to England that year 'I have been unable to obtain one shilling on account
of the [? Settlement]' (10 December 1864, O 654). Day's chief complaint was with
his wife's uncle* and he continued,
Mr Covey [he wrote 'has attributed to me almost everything bad greed extor-
tion & everything' but he deleted it] I do not comprehend misconstrues all
my letters and creates mischief between [? myself] and my wife's family by
attributing to me all sorts of things which I never inspired. It seems to me
that he wished to allow all the income to be [? tied over] until the youngest
was of age. . . . Now I have no wish to be exacting but I cannot admit the
right of any executor to alter the details of a will - so kindly have made out
what seems really to have accrued to us - even down to interest for monies
not handed over.
Day's emphasis on the lack of principle of his opponent is characteristic : the
final lines come more as the passing of sentence on the miscreant than as an expres-
sion of self-interest. He evidently received some criticism from one of the Covey
children, inspired as Day saw it by the uncle, and he hastened to explain his position
and to ask 'whether if you were in my position you would not do the same ?' (un-
dated draft, ? 1865, Q 654). He went on to explain that
Many observations of your uncle mark out the cursed [ill will - deleted] estrange-
ment between you [? and us] many of which observations if not devoid of
foundation are very distorted facts. Hardly had I set foot in England than
he refused money to you and your brother [? saying that] he had advanced me
so much when in fact I had not received one penny from him. I have never
asked him to advance my [sic] one penny. I have only asked that he should
carry out your father's will and not put his own construction upon it. . . .
These letters may be relevant to Day's expenses during the period, both in con-
nection with the production of the Fishes of Malabar and the long stay in England.
In the absence of patronage for his book from the Government of India, Day may
well have been glad of the Covey inheritance. By this time two of his brothers
had died (Edmund in 1853, Charles in i860), but profits from the family estate
* Dr Edward Covey, Emma's father, had a brother Charles, but he cannot have been the 'wicked
uncle' since he had died by 1844 (HCL., tn lilt.). Possibly this uncle was the Dr William Henry Covey
of tJckfield mentioned earlier (p. 86). Yet another possibility is the Rev. Charles Covey of Alderton.
who may have been a first cousin to Emma's father. If indeed Emma referred to him as 'uncle', then
the woman who signed herself to Emma's daughter as 'Aunt H. Covey' (see p. 95) could well have been
Hester Anne (d. 1914), daughter of the Rev. Charles (Cheltenham Public Library, m lilt.). Covey
relationships are puzzling because of the duplication of names like Charles, Edward and William, but
there is a strong suggestion that the Coveys of Alderton, Basingstoke, Uckfield and Mayfield were all
related.
94 P J P- WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
probably served merely to keep his mother and two young sisters (Mar}' and Alice),
with little to spare for the three remaining brothers (William, Francis and Henry)
(see Appendix, p. 154). Hadlow House was sold at some time before 1S67 (Appendix)
and Day may have benefited from a share in the estate.
Day's return to India with the trout eggs in February-March 1866, his stay at
Ootacamund (March-August), his posting to Kurnool (August-November) and his
eventual transfer to Madras (November) have already been described. Probably
in Madras the Cheltenham notebook Q 654 was compiled and it is to his wife Emma
that we owe the preservation of many letters and drafts. Sometimes these are
pasted in with a note that this was 'Frank's' reply to someone, but in the case of
the Shaw correspondence Emma copied out whole letters into the book ; it was
also her comment on the cutting about Furnell's skit (see p. 37). The notebooks
Q 658 and Q 659 may also have been her work. In these and later notebooks
there is e\'idence of both untidiness and method. Day's drafts speak of enormous
haste, as also the promptness with which he answered letters ; the thoroughness
with which he compiled not merely the Cheltenham scrapbooks of cuttings on
salmonid fishes (0 653, O 656) but those now in the Linnean Society and the Zoo-
logical Societj', hint rather at the patience of Emma and perhaps later of Fanny
Laura.
Madras must surely have made a welcome change after three months in Kurnool,
even though Day and his wife had not witnessed the worst cholera months. The
Europeans in this period tended to form communities that largely turned in upon
themselves for both interest and entertainment, and the community at Kurnool
was a microcosm : according to Day's cholera report (Day, 1866) there were 13
men, 10 women and 13 children. By contrast, Madras was not only the capital of
the Presidency, with its attendant heightening of social life, but was also a port
where friends returning from furlough brought the kind of intimate news that
could not be gleaned from the 'home' newspapers.
Of Day's Hfe in Madras we have only the bare details. In addition to his duties
as Medical Store Keeper, he was also Professor of Materia Medica at the Medical
College (see p. 42), and he must almost immediately have begun his collecting and
investigation of marine fishes in the area (e.g. Day, 1867b). Hitherto he had pur-
sued ichthyology amongst administrators, but at the Medical College there were
fellow surgeons who also devoted some of their leisure time to scientific or other
studies. George Bidie, for example, wrote on the coffee borer, on native dyes, on
practical pharmacy and on gold coins in the Madras Museum ; Michael Furnell
published on cholera and the infective role of public water supplies, as well as a
work entitled 'From Madras to Delhi and back via Bombay' ; another was William
Cornish, who made a study of cholera and typhoid fever (Crawford, 1930). Day
had already shown that his was not to be merely a time-serving career, but in
Madras he had the stimulating company of others of the same stamp. James
Shaw retired in February, but by now Day had almost certainly begun to win over
others to his view that his fishery work was not the most trivial of medical duties
but an important element in both health and economics. If not actually instigated
by Lord Napier, the importation of gouramies from Mauritius and their transplanting
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 95
into the Ootacamund lake at least had his direct approval (see p. 42) and is perhaps
an indication of how far Day had been able to influence official thinking in the year
since his abrupt removal to Kurnool.
In July and August 1867 Day took some, if not all, of his annual sixty days'
privilege leave at Ootacamund, partly to supervise the gouramy experiment but
perhaps mainly to give Emma a rest from the heat of Madras. Since Edith Mary
was born at the end of the October, Day may have left Emma at the cool hill station
for the rest of the summer while he returned to Madras.
Of 1868 we know only the invitation in May to inspect the Madras fisheries and
Day's journeys for the rest of that year, first to the north and then to the south of
Madras (TIF.). Much of the following year was also spent away from Madras
(March to October 1869, in Calcutta and then in Burma - see p. 43). It was during
that year that Emma died, the culmination perhaps of some eleven years of struggle
against the climate and diseases of southern India.* We have no record of the
date or the place of her death (ER. and MB. searched), nor of what provision Day
now made for the care of the three children, Fanny Laura (8), Francis Meredith (5)
and Edith Mary (2). Day's appHcation for sick leave on his return from the
Andamans might perhaps have been a way of bringing Edith back to England. He
was granted ten months' leave (see p. 45), but was recalled after five, leaving
England at the end of September 1870. Presumably the three children remained
in England and it may have been in this period, if not before, that they were looked
after by the governess Fanny Julia Faithful.
The following year Day was appointed Inspector-General of Fisheries (July 1871)
and he now divided his time between Calcutta and Simla. Two months later,
however, he applied for home leave 'on private affairs', becoming by the January of
1872 'urgent private affairs' (see p. 46), apparently for the purpose of marrying
the twenty-two-year-old Emily, youngest daughter of the Rev. Thomas Sheepshanks,
then Vicar of St John's in Coventry (DNB.). An account of some of the Sheep-
shank family is given by Dorothy Erskine Muir (1955), Emily's niece, and other
details can be culled from Venn (1953) and the DNB. Mrs Muir, daughter of
Emily's brother John (later Bishop of Norwich), never knew Emily, but she speaks
of the father as a scholarly man who, by tradition, taught the young George Ehot
Latin and Greek ; Emily's mother was Cornish (from Falmouth, where Thomas
Sheepshanks was headmaster of the Grammar School)."!"
The eldest of the Sheepshank girls was Katharine and it is she who provides the
link between Day and the Coventry branch of the family, for she was Kate, wife
of the Rev. Frederick Stockdale and guardian of the Day children on the Isle of
* In a letter to Day's daughter Edith Mary, her 'Aunt H. Covey" warns that she should expect to pay
enormous premiums on a life policy 'as the family history is not good. Your dear Mother was for years
in decline but she actually died of Cholera . . .' (30 June 1902, Eg. 7). In 1869 cholera was again on
the increase, after subsiding for two years; over five hundred deaths occurred in Madras alone {Bellew,
1885:21).
t The Sheepshanks were a Yorkshire family of which Joseph (b. 1755), Emily's great-uncle, was a
wealthy cloth manufacturer in Leeds. One of his sons, John, left an impressive collection of English
paintings to the nation and another son. Richard, was the well-known Cambridge astronomer (and
grandfather of Walter Sickert the painter); Richard's sister Anne left ^^ 10 000 for astronomical re-
search in Cambridge. There was a strong ecclesiastical vein in the family and, according to Muir, four
of Emily's sisters married clergymen.
95 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Wight ; Dorothy Muir remembered her as 'really beautiful' (IMuir, 1955 : 80, also
portrait as a child). E\'idently they had met in Coventry in about 1851 when
Stockdale was for two years Curate of St John's, Katharine's father being Rector.
In her Ootacamund journal, Emma Day mentions a visit by Katharine's sister
Jessie to the Isle of Wight in August (Eg. i : 54), and some years later Frederick
Stockdale also spoke of a visit by the Sheepshanks (letter to Day, i January 1S74,
Q 658). Day could thus have met Emily Sheepshanks as early as 1865 on the Isle
of Wight and could have got to know her well during his leave of 1870 when almost
certainly he must have spent time with the children at the Stockdales. In the
Accession Register for fish specimens for May 1870 Day's address is given at 'Gt
Russell St', but this may merely have been where he stayed on his visits to London.
Day married Emily Sheepshanks at Coventry on 13 April 1872 (DNB.). As
already pointed out. Day was in Bombay on 6 March and 43 days later (18 April)
he was about to set sail from England (also, letter to von Martens, 5 May, written
on board ship - ZMB.MS.). In 1866 the trip to India had taken 36 daj's (4 Februarv
to 12 March, trout experiment), so that even though Day now left from Bombay
and not Madras (and the Suez Canal was now open), he cannot have spent more
than a fortnight or so in England.
It is most unfortunate that no documents appear to sur\ive from this period and
it is useless to speculate. The fact that his bride was some twent\- years j'ounger
than Day, that their courtship must have been largely conducted by letter, and
that Day's application for leave - and thus their decision to marry - was taken a
year after Day had sailed back to India in September 1870 ; even a slight enlarge-
ment of these bare facts would throw much interesting light on Day's personality.
During his few weeks in England, Day had already begun to make plans to
return home to write his book on Indian fishes (see p. 49). With his marriage
and with his promotion to Surgeon-Major in February of that year, he perhaps
looked forward to two or even three years in England, united with his cliildren and
living the kind of life that he had enjoyed in Cheltenham in 1864-65. To von
Martens in Berlin he WTote that he proposed 'staying at Simla until October, then
going through Assam and if possible returning to Europe next March by the Malabar
coast' (5 May 1872, ZMB.MS.). Presumably, he and Emily set up home at Oakfield,
Simla, although his papers of this period (Day, 1873, a-f) suggest that throughout
1872 he travelled extensively (Karachi, Bombay, Cochin, Madras, Calcutta) and
can rarely have been settled for more than a month or two. Simla in this period
is well described by Carey (1870) and by Buck (1904). Larger than Ooty, longer
established and more sophisticated, its gay and at times irresponsible social Ufe
was probably not to Day's taste, but a young girl straight from England would
surely have enjoyed it.
AU promised well, but whatever hopes Day now cherished for a normal domestic
life and a mother for his children, this was not to be, for within a year EmUy had
died (DNB.). Once again we have no record of the date (pencilled 'Mar 31' in
Eg. 3 : 4) or the place and nothing can be deduced from Day's scientific papers that
would indicate an unexpected break in his fishery travels. The Rev. Stockdale
urged him to 'come and settle in England, if not at once at no distant period' ;
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 97
and he observed that it would be some years 'before Fanny [then 13] could be of
any use to you as a housekeeper but I hope you will find someone and that many
years of domestic happiness are yet before you, tho I can well imagine you feel
unsettled at present' (i January 1874, Q 658). In October 1873 Day's proposal to
spend two years in England writing the Fishes of India had been forwarded to the
Secretary of State for India. It was accepted and by May 1874 Day was once
again in England (p. 50). He never returned to India.
The remaining years in England were extremely active and productive ones.
Day was only 45 but he did not remarry and one has the impression that now he
concentrated his whole attention on his work. Certainly, he had the problem of
bringing up three small children, but the production of the Fishes of India, the speed
with which the British fishes followed in its wake, the fish hatching e.xperiments,
his travels to other museums, and his numerous smaller projects and writings, cannot
have been achieved without sacrifice of social and perhaps domestic activities.
After two years at Hartland House in Richmond, Day moved in February 1876
to his final home, Kenilworth House in Cheltenham. This is one of the largest in a
row of large Victorian houses. Day's monthly salary had been reduced, for the
period of special leave, from Rs 1500 to Rs 1000 (rupee then about 2 shillings) and
there is reason to wonder whether Day had not inherited something from the family
estate. His mother seems to have been ahve still in 1876 (inferred from Day, A.,
1928 : 5), but Hadlow House, the large family home, had been sold at some time
before 1867 and perhaps much, if not all, of the two thousand acres that went with
it (see footnote, p. 86). The shipping of his enormous collection home ; bottles
and alcohol for its upkeep ; his frequent travels abroad ; his large house ; and the
considerable size of his estate when he died (see below) ; these could hardly have
been possible without some supplement to his salary.
Day's sister Mary Ann had, by 1875, become Mrs Beaumont and was living in
Richmond, while his youngest sister, AUce Catharine, was living in the neighbourhood
of Hadlow and was perhaps by then Mrs Anderson (see Appendix). His brothers
Edmund and Charles had died young and his eldest brother WilUam died in 1886,
leaving only Henry, now retired from headmastership of Sedbergh Grammar School
and Living in West Brighton (Appendix). In 1882 Day's son Francis Meredith
followed his uncle William into a legal career, being articled to a solicitor in Kingston
on Thames for five years and striking out on his own in Wolverhampton the year
before Day's death (Appendix). Fanny Laura and Edith Mary were presumably
living at Kenilworth House.
In June 1888 Day's health began to fail. A visit to Weston-super-Mare and a
stay with his friend Sir James Maitland in Scotland brought only temporary im-
provement and in December he decided to consult a specialist in London, 'who took
a very serious view of his case' (17 July 1889, CE.). By January there was no hope
and Day hardly expected to live over the month (see p. 108). With characteristic
determination, he set about tidying the loose ends. The remaining fish specimens,
the residue of his once huge collection, had already been cleared off the shelves and
had been sent to the British Museum, of no further use to their collector. Reprints
were sorted and a set of thirteen bound volumes, together with a set of Bloch's
98 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAK
works, went to the Linnean Society (Anon., 1891). A similar set, six volumes of
reprints (which included his medical papers) went to the Zoological Society. His
drawings of fishes, some of which dated back to the early days at Cochin and the
start of the Fishes of Malabar (later bound in four volumes) were also sent to the
Zoological Society (receipts for 88 and 146 'Original drawings' dated 26 February
and 18 March, 1889 - Eg. 8). Four hundred crustaceans from India were boxed up
and dispatched to the British Museum (see p. 114). His collection of Indian birds,
nearly four hundred specimens, had been dispatched to Cambridge the previous
November (see p. 148). His large collection of natural history books he kept with
him, but most probably gave instructions for their disposal after his death. For
seven months, until mid-July, he lingered on. His last act was to correct up the
proofs of his first volume on fishes in the Fauna of India.
In his Will, drawn up on 19 February 18S9, Day named three Executors, his
daughter Fanny Laura, his son Francis Meredith, and the Cheltenham sohcitor
James Batten Winterbotham, each of whom was to receive £100 immediately. His
large house and all that it contained went to his two daughters, who also received
£5000 each (in trust) from the rest of the estate, together with a third of what
remained after that ; the final third (also in trust) went to his son Francis. The
whole estate was valued at just short of £40 000 and although his son was not
neglected, his daughters were clearly favoured. Of small bequests, he left £100
to the following : his sisters Mary and AUce ; his sister-in-law Mrs Charles Covey
(presumably wife to the brother of one of the Covey girls) ; his friend the Rev.
Frederick Stockdale and his wife Kate ; Brisbane NeUl ; and Edward John Waring*
(who had married Day's half-sister Caroline - see Appendix). Fanny JuUa Faithful,
governess to his two daughters, received an annuity of £30 and the sum of £150.
The house was to be maintained in its existing state for three months.
Day's son attended the funeral, but his two daughters were not listed among the
chief mourners (17 July 1889, CE.). On 14 December the Cheltenham solicitors,
Winterbotham & Gurney WTOte to the Town Clerk to announce that Fanny and
Edith wished to donate their father's natural history library to the Cheltenham
Public Library. The conditions were that the books should be kept separate in
Day's own bookcases and that, should the Library ever close, the gift must revert
to its donors or their legal representatives (8 January 1890, CE.). Rarely has a
naturahst's library' been preserved for so long without additions or subtractions and
its biographical importance is heightened by the presence of manuscript material
and annotated works (see p. 9-11). Some of the books are of historic interest, as for
example the plates for Forsskal's work (I cones rerum naturalium, 1776), which is
signed G. Cuvier on the fiysheet, stamped G. Cuvier on the title page, the latter
then deleted and signed A. Valenciennes ; a cutting from the sale catalogue, how-
ever, shows that the copy was honestly bought and not purloined on a visit to the
Paris Museum !
* Waring had first ser\'ed in the Colonial Medical Service in Jamaica before joining the Indian Medical
Service and taking part in the 2nd Burmese War (Crawford. 1914 ; 150). Possibly it was he who en-
couraged Day to go out to India. He retired in 1865, but the following year Emma noted in her journal
(Eg. i) that they had sent school fees to Cochin for Waring's children, which is curious.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 99
At the time of the donation of the boolcs, Da3-'s daughters were said to be 'both
of St Catherine's, Christchurch' and to be 'shortly leaving home for Christmas', so
that transfer of the books was urged before 23 December (8 January 1890, CE.).
Fanny Laura kept at least some of her father's books, which she later (1924) be-
queathed to her brother or to his son (W.FLD.). She may have left Cheltenham
for a while, but in 1892-94 she is shown by the street directory to have been at
10 Montpellier Grove ; the next record is Auburn, Hatherley Road in 1924 (W.FLD.) ;
and finally Fairmount, Fairmount Road, where she died in 1942 (W.FLD.). There
was a brief notice of her death in the Gloucestershire Echo (30 July 1942) and in the
Cheltenham Chronicle (i August 1942), but neither paper carried an obituary, per-
haps because of war-time restrictions on space. Amongst other items relating to
her father, she had a portrait in oils of Francis Day, which she bequeathed, together
with the books and the family silver, to her brother Francis Meredith Day or to
his son Harold Francis Daj' (W.FLD.) ; these are now with the Egerton family
(descendants of Edith Mary Day).
After his father's death, Francis Meredith moved down from Wolverhampton,
practised for a year in London and then moved to Fenny Stratford in Buckingham-
shire. The following year he married Florence Edith, daughter of the deceased
Thomas Holdom, a hotel keeper, and in 1893 gave up his practice as a solicitor ;
possibly he was persuaded to help run the family business. For the next sixteen
years he did not apply for a practising certificate and we have no record of his work
during this period.* In 1908 he was living in London and he renewed his annual
certificate (LSRSD.). However, in 1910 he became involved with William Rose and
Frederick Ferdinando, an unscrupulous pair who posed as his clerks, ran an office in
his name, and 'touted' for clients amongst prisoners awaiting trial ; the two were
eventually imprisoned for fraud [The Times, 16 February 1911). Francis Meredith,
who seems to have collected a weekly remittance of ten shilHngs from this business,
could not entirely escape censure (and indeed it was with reference to him that the
Clerkenwell Magistrate had made the original complaint to the Law Society). He
did not suffer the fate of the other two offenders but was struck off the Roll by the
Law Society for his part in the affair [The Times, 11 November 1911). One can only
be saddened by this contrast with his father's successful career.
In 1893, four years after Day's death, his second daughter Edith Mary married
John Campbell Egerton (FRMMF.), an accomplished portrait and landscape artist
of Bath (exhibited Royal Academy, 1899) (newspaper cuttings in Eg. 5). The
wedding took place at Chedington in Dorset and Francis Meredith was present
(himself already married by then - Eg. 5). The ceremony was conducted by the
Rector, none other than the Rev. Frederick Stockdale who, with his wife Kate,
had looked after the Day children as far back as 1866 and probably until Day's final
return from India in 1S74. The Egertons had one child, Reginald Francis Egerton,
and one grandchild, Reginald Ansell Day Egerton. It is through this branch of the
family that certain of Day's books, manuscripts, photographs and other bio-
graphical material have most kindly been made available to us.
* However, his son Harold's birth certificate (11 June 1899) shows that they were then living at
63 Claverton Road, Pimlico, London.
lOO p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
In working through the available material a tentative picture emerges of how Day-
saw himself and how others saw him. Certainly his personality was such that it
either excited strong reactions or - perhaps of equal significance - it led men like
Brisbane Neill to adopt placatory tones, as if Day's strong will were better met by
reasonableness than directly opposed or criticized.* In the end, Day usually had
his way. His conflicts (and the manner in which his drafts are written) show the
speed with which he took the offensive, as well as his care in presenting his own case
as explicitly as possible. His sense of the rightness of his cause was sharp and
unjaelding, in defeat expressing itself by pithy comments against letters or cuttings
in Jiis scrapbooks. Thus, when official refusal of one of his claims concluded with the
words 'The Government . . . are unable to allow his claim for Rupees 200 as the fee
for an Examiner to the Madras University', Day added in ink at the bottom
'especially as he is not from the North of the Tweed' and 'No thanks for saving
expenditure to Gov. by using my own horses' and more in that vein, ending with
'The Medical Dept. have much to be thankful for !' (17 July 1869, MGRD.Proc,
Q 658). That Day took up the cause of officers in the Madras Medical Service and
apparently went to the trouble of compiling a small pamphlet of their complaints,
shows that his criticisms were not merely selfish ones ; he was evidently prepared to
do more about it than merely to sit complaining in the Officers' Mess. His impulsive-
ness is also seen in the impUed criticism made by Wilhelm Peters, to which Day
replied : 'Every day shows me the truth of your observation that it is impossible
to do fish in a hurry and to do them well' (Day to Peters, 28 November 1875,
ZMB.MS.).
From 1865, however, the dominant theme was for official recognition of his
ichthyological work, whether the trout experiment, patronage for the Fishes of
Malabar, employment as Inspector of Fisheries, or financial support for the Fishes
of India. Time and again, the worthiness of these projects is introduced into his
disputes as if to provide unassailable justification for all his actions. Kurnool might
be as unpleasant as Ootacamund was idyllic, but that was immaterial : it was the
disruption of the fish planting experiment that really mattered and surely Lord
Napier or Shaw or Chipperfield could appreciate that. In his long list of complaints
against Giinther sent to Owen in August 1874 (see p. 69), Day spoke of the Fishes
of India as being 'not of personal but of Imperial importance' (BMNH.MS.G. 15).
Poor Gunther, having achieved his British naturalization papers only six months
before, now stood accused of obstructing nothing less than the solemn will of the
Crown ! Not that Day was a hypocrite. His singleness of purpose, his energy,
his willingness to throw himself whole-heartedly into the investigation of cholera,
all argue strongly for his sincerity and belief in his motives.
There is one occasion, however, when he seems to have been guilty of a half-truth.
From Kurnool he wrote to Shaw to say that his wife's two sisters 'were to have left
* Even in 1877 Neill was obliged to calm Day's over-hasty reactions. The cause was a popular book
by Beavan (1877) on Indian freshwater fishes which so incensed Day by its inaccuracies that he scribbled
pencilled comments on almost every page (Cheltenham copy, Q 139). Inserted in the book is a soothing
letter from Neill saying that of course the book is dreadful but Day should resist 'smashing it up, as
from a loose sheet of paper I suspect you propose to do'.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) loi
England this month to join us in Madras. We were just in time to [he wrote "stop
them" but cancelled it] tell them to stay for a month longer.' (Day to Shaw, undated
draft, 659.) The tone implied one more reason for Day to take up his Madras
appointment. The reality was somewhat different, for he opposed the visit and had
threatened to ship the unfortunate girls back to England on the next boat if they
were unescorted. To a Mr Adams he wrote
To my unutterable astonishment I heard this mail that the only reason Miss
Minnie and Miss Fanny Covey had not been shipped to Madras to my address
by the P & O Steamship of Oct. 4th was consequent on there being no berths.
I cannot conceive of any father having a hand in such proceedings. Two
young girls without chaperones ... it must simply be iniquity did they thus
come to me . . ..
Please remember that I have a family of my own.
I most distinctly warn all parties that should they be shipped here ... to
my address . . . without a chaperone I will send them back direct with the least
possible delay.
(Undated draft, 659)
The letter is quite uncompromising, with no fear for appearing callous towards
his sisters-in-law (whatever his personal affections for them might have been).
Again one sees Day's immediate pounce on the morality of the situation, as if to
discount in advance any suggestion that the arrival of the two young girls might be
a burden to him. If Day was as direct in his speech as he was in his letters, tlien
one can well understand the friction that this caused, with Gunther and with
others.
How did Day see himself ? One small clue appears in a rather cryptic letter
written to Chipperfield during his stay at Kurnool.
You will no doubt consider me an extraordinary individual but the exigencies
of the service require all sorts of work from everybody and although I do not
admire having been sent here it is perfectly clear I have a duty to perform and
do it I will if possible.
. . . for I do not like to look grumpy - though I may at times and I fear I
always do speak my mind, still the good of the service is to me a great considera-
tion. I know it is a mistake - I know everybody ought to look to himself only
but I somehow cannot quite agree with that view of things . . ..
(Undated draft, O 654)
This letter was written at about the time that Day was composing an anonymous
article entitled 'The Madras Medical Service in 1867' which purported to represent
the complaints of the 'members of the Madras Medical Services, with but few
exceptions' (ZSL. i). Possibly Chipperfield was one of the latter and Day's letter
replied to his objections. Day's authorship of the article seems assured by its
inclusion in the bound volume of Day's medical papers which he had sent to the
Zoological Society, together with reprints of his ichthyological papers, shortly
before his death (see p. 12). Characteristic of Day also are such comments as.
I02 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
The most efficient Medical Officers will naturally, at all times, be selected to
afford medical aid during violent epidemics and in unhealthy seasons, but no
extra remuneration is given for such work ... he must be a pecuniary loser, as
only those who have thus suffered are able to comprehend.
The article was generally concerned with the decline in conditions of service for
Madras medical officers following the post-Mutiny transfer of power from the Company
to the Crown, in the face of assurances that advantages of pay, leave and prospects
for promotion would be maintained under the Acts 21 and 22 Victoria Cap. CVI.
It was noted that a Surgeon-Major ranked equal to a Lieutenant-Colonel yet his
monthly pay was Rs 428 less, while a Surgeon received Rs 100 less than his
equivalent, a Major ; such did not obtain in the British Army. Furthermore, the
reorganization of the Army after the Mutiny resulted in fewer senior medical staff
posts to which Day and his colleagues could aspire, and so on. The whole indictment
is typical of the pains that Day took when he set out to 'speak his mind'.
For all his critical nature and frequent attacks on authority (the Police in Cochin,
Lord Napier, the Madras Government, Colonel Man, and the leading ichthyologist
of his time). Day saw himself as a conservative in politics. His failure 'to fathom
the depths of the deep seated Uberal views, with which we in India have lately been
favoured from Europe' (see p. 39) was written in September 1866 at a time when
Lord Derby's Conservative administration had succeeded that of Lord Russell ;
Disraeli had been appointed leader of the House of Commons and it would be two
years before Gladstone and the Liberals swept into power. To the English
community in India, however, as to the 'settlers' in more recent times, quite mild
overseas policies could well smack of Whiggery if they threatened the status quo.
During the iS6o's the structure of British rule in India was rapidly being overhauled,
with paternaUsm giving way to a bureaucracy that many found discouraging to the
personal initiative of former times. The executive activity of the District Officer
was whittled away by the development of technical departments, while district
administration was divided amongst a number of heads of departments whose
orders came from provincial headquarters. At the same time, the post-Mutiny
boom, on the crest of which the ryots had become established as a prosperous land-
owning class, was fast receding and the Orissa and subsequent famines destroyed
confidence in the new administration. Day would not have been alone in his
criticisms and 'liberal' was as good a word as any with which to dub the wave of
new legislation.
Day's most explicit references to politics occur in his letters to Peters regarding
his hopes in 1880 of getting the post of Inspector of Fisheries in England (see p. 000).
This time there was serious cause for alarm. In April, Gladstone and the Liberals
were returned to office and, as Day put it, '. . . now all is change and I have to watch
everyone so closely that I cannot get away [to Berlin]' (see p. 57). His insistence
that politics would interfere with his chances for the appointment suggest that his
views were strongly held and as strongly aired. This would not be inconsistent
with the impression already gained from the various disputes in which he became
involved. Something of the military man appears in a letter to Wilholm Peters in
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 103
which he comments on the crisis with Russia in 1878. He was certain that England
would go to war with Russia, 'single handed if necessary', adding that 'a few noisy
triflers with Gladstone at their head would go in for peace at any price, but the
nation will not have that policy any longer' (6 April 187S, ZMB.MS.).*
Day's opinion of Giinther is perhaps not difficult to guess. The best statement
of it is in his letter to Peters (14 October 1874, ZMB.MS.) in which he commiserates
over the difficulties of seeing material at the British Museum. Day continued.
Clever as he is and zealous as he no doubt is for the interests of science he is
still more jealous of his own reputation and fearful that investigations might
prove him to be wrong.
It is to be regretted that so talented an individual is so sensitive, and that
whilst dreading the criticism of his neighbours, he uses language respecting
others he would not like employed to himself.
Another, but rather whimsical comment, comes from one of Day's Cheltenham
scrapbooks (0 658) into which he pasted a newspaper cutting (dated by himself
June 1873).
The Lahor paper says that the fact of Dr Hooker having rejected liis work on
the Flora of India has so affected Dr J. L. Stewart, Conservator of Forests in
the Punjab, that on Friday last a medical board at Lahor not only pronounced
that his life was in danger, but that his reason had left him.
Against this Day wrote : 'Humph - I conclude Giinther would reject my work
on fishes had he the opportunity - I hope the result would not be identical FD /
Death ensued the same month FD'.
Day kept no journal but from time to time he would confide his personal feelings
in the margin or on a spare page of a book or reprint, as in the cutting above. On
one occasion (flysheets of bound volume of reprints, Eg. 11) he made some extracts
on Bleeker's method of illustration, taken from a letter from Hubrecht (see p. 112
below) and then turned to Giinther.
Giinther was originally intended for the Church and studied Theology for i or 2
years. Schlegel 11/5/76.
? is this the reason why he is so dogmatic & overbearing ? - is this why he
wishes to be considered infallible ? Does he wish [deleted, desire] to be an
ichthyological Pope ? Is it not written in the book of Giinther should I suppose
be the Ultima Thule of ichthyological discussions according to Hr. Giinther.
FDay.
Curiously enough, Day did not annotate his own copies of the Zoological Record
(Q 324), even in the case of the highly critical 1869 issue. However, his copy of
Giinther's Catalogue (Q 236) contains many annotations and pasted in descriptions
* In contrast to Day, Pieter Bleeker prided himself on being a liberal, albeit a moderate one, and for
a time was editor of the Tidschvift voor N ederlandsch Indie (which was instrumental in liberalizing colonial
politics) : he also sat as a liberal on the town council of The Hague, to his amusement heavily defeating
conser\'ative opposition by virtue of the popularity of his cholera tonic - 'Bleeker's drink' (autobiography,
English version in Lamme, 1973).
I04 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
of specimens, although no pungent comments were found. These volumes are
interleaved with figures and on the flysheet of the first volume Day wrote,
Some rough notes also plates from
Cu\'ier & \'alenciennes Hist. Nat. Poissons
Gunther a few of his unpubhshed plates
Day Fish India and Fish Great Britain
FDay
On the reverse of the flysheet of the first volume Day wrote a note questioning
the completeness of the Catalogue, since he himself had found in Cochin alone some
26 unrecorded species. This element of rivalry is even better expressed in the
interleaved copy of the Fishes 0/ India (Eg. 12). On the flysheet of the first volume
he totalled 'New species in this volume' and gave two headings, 'Giinther' and 'Day'.
In the first volume Day scored 20 while Gunther managed none ; in the second
volume Day's total was 42 and Giinther's only 3 ; in the third it was 68 against 7 ;
and in the final volume the grand total was Day 197, Gunther a paltry 16. In fact,
this really showed how careful Gunther had been, after the Catopra affair, to avoid
describing new species from India (see, for example, the geographical analysis of
Giinther's papers in Gunther, R. T., 1930).
In July 1879 Giinther remarried. In a letter to Peters, Day wrote : 'Gunther
has married a young wife - she is evidently brushing him up and hopes are expressed
that his temper may improve.' (17 January 1S80, ZMB.MS.) In May, however,
Day had to report that 'Giinther is of the same angehc temper and disposition he
has ever been' (22 May 1880, ZMB.MS.). Day does not seem to have ever hit at
Giinther's nationality, but Gray once referred to him as a 'regular Prussian' (and
Peters as a 'regular Bismark') in a letter to Alphonse Milne-Edwards (12 April 1874,
MS. 2473, Bibl. Centr., Mus. Nat. d'Hist. Nat., Paris).
As with Day, it is interesting to see how Gunther saw himself. One gUmpse of
the irrascible side to his nature comes in a letter that he wrote to Alfred Newton in
1869. Admittedly, this was at a time of intensive work, when any man's temper
might become frayed, but it would be some years before this pressure abated and
meanwhile this was one side at least of the Giinther with which Day and others had
to deal. Begging Newton to take over the editorship of the Zoological Record,
Giinther complained,
... it worries me too much. I am not organised to take things calmly ; I
feel easUy annoyed, and a disappointment in the morning or an unpleasant letter
which I have to write, hke some of my last to yourself, sours my temper for
the whole day. To a man who can take or make things more pleasantly, the
editorship of the Record is an easy matter . . .
and again,
. . . and if it is known that j'ou, a more popular man than myself, are editor, I
have but httle doubt that the money will be granted, and you are afloat.
(31 July 1869, cited by Gunther, 1975 : 293)
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 105
If Day was quick to take offence, Giinther's manner seems to have been an ideal
vehicle to give cause for it. A letter to Phihp Sclater, for example, drew Sclater's
comment 'I hope you do not reply to other correspondents so curtly as to me in
your last letter - else 1 could easily understand you might offend them !' (6 Febru-
ary 1872, BMNH.MS.G. 16). At the end of that year Sclater again complained.
He started his letter 'Dear Gtinther' rather than his usual 'My Dear Giinther' and
he asked why Giinther had written to him as 'Dear Sir'. He went on : 'It really is too
absurd after all the time we have known one another.' (20 December 1872, BMNH.
MS.G. 16). In a draft reply, Giinther made it clear that '. . . your conduct to-
wards me has compelled me to assume [that form of address] . . . however great
the divergence of our principles and motives . . it would not have caused [this rift]
if your conduct at our meeting in the Gallery of the B.M. had not overstepped the
bounds of forebearance' (undated, BMNH.MS.G. 16). On that occasion Sclater
had apparently commented that young Gerrard (son of Edward Gerrard, whom
Giinther highly valued for his skill as a preparer for skins and skeletons) was 'the
appointed agent for the sale of dead animals ..." but Sclater insisted that he had
been misunderstood and could prove true what he had actually said (21 or 26
December 1872, BMNH.MS.G. 16). Further exchanges occurred in August 1874,
and almost total war broke out in April 1876 when Sclater perhaps flippantly sug-
gested that Giinther had in his rooms Wolf's painting of the gorilla and other pic-
tures missing from the Zoologcal Society ; Giinther was only pacified by soothing
letters from Alfred Newton of Cambridge (BMNH.MS.G. 16) which, in tone, recall
the letters that Day received from Brisbane Neill during the quarrel over Catopra
(see p. 2g).
Exchanges of this kind, either by letter or published in newspapers or journals,
are characteristic of the mid- Victorian era. Letters to Nature frequently contain
asperities, or downright insults, which a modern editor would quickly remove as
not being in the spirit of science. These Victorian exchanges, of which those
between Giinther and Day are such a perfect example, were in some measure the
product of an overemphasis on honour, duty, principle and moral right. It was
the determination to defend these, almost as a sacred duty, that made the quarrel
between Giinther and Day so impossible to resolve. Unlike Newton, Brisbane
Neill, Chipperfield and others, Giinther and Day invested their high moral pur-
pose with such inflexible seriousness that they mistook for dutj' what was often
trivial.
It should not be forgotten, however, that this was only one facet of their working
lives. Both men had extremely busy and productive careers and neither could
have achieved what he did had the quarrel been his sole preoccupation. Day's
achievements have been described in some detail, but for Giinther, who appears
here almost wholly in relation to the quarrel, a very unbalanced picture emerges and
one that does no justice to the great contributions that he made to ichthyology, to
the British Museum, and to zoology as a whole. Some indication of the scope of his
work comes from the biographical sketch and listing of his papers by his son (Gunther,
1930), but the best and most complete biographical work is that written by his
grandson (Gunther, 1975). In addition, Giinther's own account of the growth of
io6 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
the Zoolog}' Department (Gunther, 1912) is an impressive testimony of his capa-
bilities as both a research worker and an administrator.
However much Gunther regarded Day as a nuisance and one who wasted his time,
he nevertheless cannot have failed to realize the provocation that lay in his reviews
and criticisms of Day's work. To his credit, Gunther abruptly withdrew from the
written battle after 1871, but even five years later the scars had not been forgotten.
In April 1876, when Da\' was to read a paper to the Linnean Society on The fishes
of the Deccan (Day, 1876c), the Secretary of the Society, James Murie, wrote urging
Gunther to attend. He pointed out that since
3'ou and Day have crossed swords and in the outside world by some the B.M.
suffers, I should like you by your always manlj' conduct to show you are above
personalities and pettiness. ... I do not hesitate to say that your role for future
probabilities is to assuage all asperities. Never mind birth-place you are
ours. ... I feel above all party, but am not blind to the future which some
are preparing for, and why not you, who in many things show yourself liberal
and broadspirited.
(5 April 1876, BMNH.MS.G. 2)
Gunther evidently refused, by way of a long letter and reference to the exchange
in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society back in 1871. Murie 'carefully perused'
these and concluded,
I can see you have been deeply hurt, and bounce is a thing you do not relish.
However, you ought to take a leaf out of your good and true friend, the glorious
Newton [Alfred Newton]. Smoke your pipe and crack a joke at the hard saws
and intended thumps of your opponent.
In other words turn him off with humour, nothing can withstand that. But
it is so hard to change one's nature. You are such a serious customer you
ought to have been a parson. . . . You ought to feel like the big Newfoundland
careless of the attacks of the small fry.
(26 April 1876, BMNH.MS.G. 2)
Almost certainly Giinther did not attend the meeting and if anything the estrange-
ment between him and Day grew worse. In 1884 the Editor of Nature sent Gunther
an article by Day which contained criticisms of Giinther's work. Giinther replied
that he was 'hardly in a position of advising you' because
The writer has rendered himself notorious by the insane attacks he has made
for years upon me. I have long ceased to take the least notice of them, and I
should also decline the present, if you should pubUsh it. However, I can put
you in the way of convincing yourself that the article although written in
unusually mild language contains gross misrepresentation of my views on those
fishes [possibly Antennarius]. I send you an abstract of what I said about
them in my 'Study of Fishes' i88o, p. 474, to wirich the writer refers. I send
this for your own guidance, but not for pubUcation, as I will have nothing more
to do with the gentleman.
(Undated draft, BMNH.MS.G. 2)
FRANCIS DAY (1829-188C,) 107
The 'big Newfoundland' was certainly remaining aloof from these attacks, although
hardly with the grace and humour advocated by Murie. For his part, Day seems
to have withdrawn the article, since his only notes to Nature of that year dealt with
salmon and Scopehts and neither attacked Gunther's work (Day, 1884a, b). In
Giinther's mind at least, the break was complete. His reactions to Day's salmonid
book of three years later (1887) were carefully added to his manuscript on British
fishes but he allowed himself no public comment. Both were now in their late
fifties : reconciliation seemed impossible.
RECONCILIATION
Throughout this account of the quarrel between Day and Gunther we have tried
to be impartial, but the nature of the evidence and its uneven survival have often
seemed to favour one or other of the participants. Had the issue at stake been a
clear-cut one - for example, acceptance or rejection of Darwinian theories - then
it would have been possible to make a scientific assessment of the disputes. As it
is, ta.xonomy has made such strides that most frequently both are now seen to have
been wrong and little emerges from marking up Day's contemporary successes
against those of Giinther. Day received support from men such as Pieter Bleeker,
Thomas Jerdon, Wilhelm Peters and Richard Bliss, as well as sympathy from
Brisbane Neill and others, but this does not necessarily strengthen his case.
Neither man lacked loyal and admiring colleagues* and one must see the root of
the matter in some incompatibility of their temperaments.
Both Day and Gunther were ambitious, clever, dedicated, but in one respect
deficient, for in a sense each lacked an element of what the other possessed. Giinther
was a professional, invested with all the authority of a famous institution and thus
having an almost implicit standing in the scientific world. Day, on the other hand,
was English and thus armed with a cultural and social acceptabihty that was
independent of his scientific attainments. In the end, of course, they arrived at
virtually the same positions, but what was planted in the mid-sixties had, by the
mid-eighties, grown too tangled for any solution to be reached by reason alone. The
only reconciliation possible was one of sentiment and in January i88g the pretext
arose : Day was dying of cancer.
Gunther heard the news from R. Etheridge, Keeper of the Geological Department,
who passed him a letter he had received from a Cheltenham friend. The latter
spoke of the quarrel and of Day's regret, for 'it weighs on his mind . . . if Dr Giinther
could see his way to write Day a kind note Day would be glad' (29 December 1888,
BMNH.MS.G. 15). Gunther saw the letter on 10 January and replied immediately.
He first assured Day that his specimens for the British Museum had arrived safely
and would be under his personal care. He then went on to try to resolve the con-
flict between them.
* In his obituaries, Day was referred to as 'so able and so amiable a man' (17 July 1889, CE.). while
the Chronicle (20 July 1889) went so far as to say 'Specialists are as a rule not the niost agreeable of
human beings but Dr Day was one of those exceptions which prove the rule and attract for themselves
a surrounding of friends and admirers*.
lo8 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Second!}-, I take this opportunity of expressing my sincere desire that every
feeling of animosity should cease between us. It has lasted much too long
and although I have been silent for 3'ears, it is a matter of great regret to me
[that] the feeling was in my heart. I should be happier, if you could let me
know that \-ou could reciprocate this wish. You may be more ready to accede
to it when I tell you that you have misconstrued many of my actions in which
I really had no intention of hurting you, and I never worked against you behind
your back. Let us forget and forgive the past : and if I should be spared a
little beyond the time allotted to you, you may be assured that no remembrance
of the past will be allowed to influence my work and that your work will be
treated by me as I wish mine to be treated by those who come after us.
(10 January 1889, BMNH.MS.G. 15)
Day replied equally promptly (11 January 1889, BMNH.MS.G. 15). He first
gave some extremely important information about his collections (see p. 152), but
his principal concern was to make his peace.
Your letter received last night afforded me intense pleasure. I much regret
anything I may have done to vex or annoy you and I sincerely trust that all
such subjects as may have occurred between us ma\' be buried in obhvion. I
trust to obey the call I have received without harbouring ill will to anyone and
wish they would grant the same to me. May we both meet with that acceptance
which can only bring peace at the last. . . .
Should I live over the end of this month I will send you my last paper which
is now in the printer's hands for the Cotteswold Club. . . .
I have now only to wish you future success and to hope that in sajdng adieu
such may not be more than a temporary separation until the time arrives that
He in His infinite mercy allows us to enter into a heritage of peace and goodwill.
Yours sincerely,
Francis Day
In this manner, after twenty years of bitterness and dispute with Giinther, Day
tried at the end to fulfil the symbolism of the device on his letterhead : two out-
spread wings connected by clasped hands and above it the motto
Sic itur ad astra - thus travel to the stars
DRAWINGS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
In spite of Giinther's earlier criticisms of Day's draughtsmanship for the Fishes
of Malabar (see p. 28), Day's drawings show considerable talent in both hne work
and colour and while the copper engravings in that book are somewhat pedestrian,
they are perfectly adequate (as Giinther later admitted in his review). Day could
not hope to attain Ford's mastery on the stone (nor had he the time to attempt it),
but his drawings for the Fishes of India appear to have been in no way inferior to
those drawn by Achilles, Suzini and Mintern, at least to judge from the finished
engravings ; unfortunately the originals have not been found and were presumably
dispensed with afterwards.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 109
A talent for drawing seems to have been in the family. Day's sister Alice was
capable of producing pleasing watercolours, one of which survives in the possession
of Elizabeth Crossland of the New Inn at Hadlow Down, having been presented to
her father by AUce Day ; it is entitled 'Old Yew Tree, Waghorn's Farm, Hadlow
Down, Sussex, painted by Miss Day'. More than ordinary abiUty was shown, how-
ever, by Day's grandfather William Day (1764-1807), a somewhat neglected English
watercolourist who 'at his best . . . was highly accomplished' (WUliams, 1952 : 249).
He was also a keen collector of rocks and minerals, some of his specimens having
been purchased by James Sowerby (1757-1822) according to Macdonald (1974 : 388)
and others going to the Central Library, Finchley Road, London (Day, A., 1928).
His interest in geology was combined with that of art, producing a preoccupation
with rocks and rock formations, notably in his sketches made during a tour through
Derbyshire and the Lake District with John (William) Webber in the late 1780's
(Egerton, 1970, who reproduced matching sketches by Webber and Day).*
With this artistic tradition behind him (and no doubt his grandfather's pictures
hung on the walls of Hadlow House), Francis Day must surely have made sketches
in India. Certainly the vignettes in the Fishes of Malabar suggest this, but no
drawings have so far come to light.
The main collection of Day's drawings of Indian fishes is in the Zoological Society's
library in London, where there are four bound volumes labelled 'Original drawings
Fishes of India'. They contain 705 figures cut out and pasted onto the pages in
systematic order (beginning sharks, rays, eels, cyprinids, clupeoids, percoids, etc.,
that is to say, the reverse of both Giinther's arrangement in the Catalogue and Day's
in the Fishes of India, but matching that used by Day in the Fauna of British
India, therefore mounted by Day himself after about 1875). Above the head of
each fish is a number written neatly in ink (presumably by Day), the numbers
running consecutively through the volumes (1-160, 161-367, 368-600, 601-705).
Other numbers in pencil may refer to earlier arrangements. The majority of the
drawings are watercolours, but a few are uncoloured. Some are completed, most
are fully coloured but lack outUnes to scales, etc., and some are mere colour sketches
evidently done in haste and on the spot ; in one or two the fish lies on a river bank
with a landscape behind. Pencil notes are sometimes added, usually a vernacular
name or locality but occasionally a reference to an author or some comment on the
identification.
Below the head of each fish, in ink, is a signature. In most cases this is either
'F. Day' or, slightly more frequently, ' W. E.'. The latter refers to Sir Walter Elhot,
formerly of the Madras Civil Service and a man of wide interests, including natural
history (his wife Maria was half-sister to Philip Sclater's wife Jane). Although by
1854 a member of the Council of the Governor of Madras, he probably did not meet
Day in India since he left on retirement in i860 (DNB.). He had, however, received
* This was a critical period in the development of English landscape painting and William Day was
not alone in his interest in the elements of landscape. Another who made the Derbyshire/Lake District
tour {in 1783) was Philipe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-18 12). who later toured Wales {1786), possibly
with Thomas Gainsborough {Joppien, 1973). Since de Loutherbourg also knew W'ebber, drawing on
his Cook voyage sketches and artifacts for the stage spectacle 'Omai' at Covent Garden, he may have
known William Day too.
no P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
in 1865 Day's printed brochure urging the appointment of a naturahst for Madras
(see above, p. 33) and it is possible that Day had met him when on leave, most
likely in 1870 when he visited Scottish salmon rivers (CE.). According to a letter
from Day to Peters (21 December 1874, ZMB.MS.), Day visited Elliot at his home
Wolfiee near Harwick in Scotland in December 1S74 to look over his zoological
collection and he came away with specimens of bats for Peters (some apparently
Blyth tj'pes) and a promise of further mammalian material. In April the following
^■ear Day received the addirional specimens, together with drawings and notes, and
sent them to Peters (Day to Peters, 3 April 1875, ZMB.MS.). Elliot seems to have
planned a large work on the Indian fauna on his retirement, but in a letter to Peters
(March 1875, ZMB.MS.) he described how his hopes had been dashed. He had
dispatched what was evidently a very large collection of Indian animals (including
fish skins) to England in a ship containing a cargo of sugar. Hit by a cyclone,
water had leaked into the hold and 'you may judge of the conditions in wh I
received the contents ... I abandoned all my long cherished plans. A few things
rescued from the WTeck I gave to others to utilize. ' Some fish skins were saved and
were given to a museum near Harwick, where they were seen by Day ; a few Elliot
skins were also acquired by Day (see p. 150, footnote). With regard to ElUot's
drawings. Day recorded in the Fishes of India (Preface : v) that the latter 'most
liberally placed at my disposal the whole of his beautiful and accurate coloured
illustrations of the Fishes of Madras and Waltair which he had had executed by
native artists from fresh specimens. These comprise many hundred species, each
with its native name attached, as well as Jerdon's identification, thus giving me the
key to the fishes recorded in "Ichthyological Gleanings in Madras" ..." (Jerdon's
paper of 1851, in which 391 species were mentioned). The Zoological Society
drawings marked 'W.E.' are presumably these drawings, although it is possible that
Day merely copied them.
Other drawings in tliis Zoological Society collection are marked 'H. S. Thomas',
' Jerdon' and 'Ham. Buchanan'. The latter are certainly copies ; Day had e.xamined
Hamilton-Buchanan's drawings in the library of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta
(Day, 1871a) and he expressly stated that he had been allowed to copy drawings
from the second Hamilton-Buchanan collection which had just been returned to
India after Ijing for many years at the India Office in London (Day, i873e). The
Thomas drawings are those of Henrj' SuUivan Thomas, Collector in South Canara
in the 1870's. He had pubUshed a useful paper on fish culture (Thomas, 1870) and
had provided Day with both specimens and biological notes, in recognition of which
Day gave his name to new species of Ambassis, Barbus and Scaphiodon. Referring
to the drawings, Day stated that Thomas 'has had a few excellent coloured figures
of some fresh-water fishes executed for me by native artists' {Fishes of India,
Preface : v). Day had further reason to be grateful to Thomas, for it was he who
had sent the first specimen of trout 'bred in India in the wild' (loc. cit.), thus con-
founding Giinther's prediction. Jerdon's drawings are also mentioned in the Fishes
of India. He had had 'coloured figures made of large numbers' of fishes, presumably
again by native artists. The fact that Elliot's drawings were the key to the fishes
recorded in Jerdon's 'Gleanings' imphes that Jerdon's own drawings either were
FRANCIS DAY (1829-18S9) iii
not then available to Day or were unsuitable. Elliot may even have drawn from
Jerdon specimens. Thus, at least one specimen in Day's collection, stated to have
come from Elliot's collection, is marked as a Jerdon fish and indicated 'see coloured
figure' (see p. 150 below).
At the 1883 International Fisheries Exhibition, Day exhibited a collection of
coloured drawings of fishes (Anon., 1884 : 155). These would almost certainly
have been this Zoological Society' series, or at least a part of it.
Eight further drawings by Day are in the India Office Library and were listed by
Archer (1962 : 77-78) as NHD. 1317-24. All were drawn at Cochin, six being dated
1863. The first two are represented by photographs 'by Mr Griggs from original
drawing by Dr F. Day' (W. Griggs Ltd of Hanover Street, Peckham, a well-known
firm of fine-art engravers - Archer, 1969 : 3). The following subjects are shown :
1317 Serranus lanceolatus (pen and ink : photo)
1318 Mesoprion rangifer (pen and ink : photo)
1319 Serranus sexfasciatus (watercolour)
1320 Eleotris butts (watercolour)
132 1 Psendohagrns chryseus (watercolour)
1322 Chaetodon pretextans (watercolour)
1323 Anahas scandens (watercolour)
1324 Etroplus meleagris (pen and ink)
The first of these was used as Plate I in the Fishes of Malabar. Numbers 1319
and 1321 were also included but were redrawn ; cost perhaps deterred Day from
using all of them.
The only other coloured drawings that have come to light are twelve spare figures
from the Fishes of Malabar and a drawing of Rasbora neilgherriensis, all bound in
with a set of reprints (Eg. 14 - see p. 14). Only two coloured copies of the Fishes
of Malabar have been seen (Eg. 21), but Day listed thirty-one subscribers for coloured
copies (Q 602) and perhaps fifty were made altogether ; the proof copy (0 620) has
six coloured plates.
As mentioned earlier (p. 55), Day told Peters that he intended having twenty
coloured copies of the Fishes of India 'but this cannot be done for 3 or 4 years'
(28 November 1875, ZMB.MS.). By 1878 he hoped 'before long to complete a
coloured series of the Fishes of India, which I could hardlj' accomplish in a satis-
factory manner were it not for Sir W. Elhot's assistance' (Fishes of India, Preface : vi).
This points to the great importance of the Zoological Society drawings : this was
to be the 'master' for his coloured sets. Although time and expense probably
defeated the project, there was the added problem of procuring further drawings
since some five hundred of the species illustrated in the Fishes of India are not
represented in the collection.
The Zoological Society drawings are not well known to ichthyologists but are
obviously of considerable value in identifying Day's fishes, as well as those of Thomas
and Jerdon. Most were made from fresh material, as Day stated for his own in the
Prefaces to the Fishes of Malabar and Fishes of India. In some cases they will
have been made from the figured specimens now in Calcutta, although this can only
112 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
be deduced with certainty when Day possessed a single specimen. It is of interest
to note that Bleeker, by contrast, examined rather few fresh specimens himself.
Day was aware of tlais and on the flysheet of a volume of reprints (Eg. ii) he copied
out part of a letter from Hubrecht (ii May 1876) in which it is stated that Bleeker's
specimens 'were collected by medical and other officers - His colours were concocted
in Holland from a few notes, recollections and observations on the preserved
specimens.'
In addition to the Elliot and the Jerdon sets of drawings, Day also made use of
another collection, that of Samuel Richard TickeU (c. 1810-75) (his career outhned
by Low et al., 1930 ; see also Anon., igoS). Tickell first took up appointment with
the 31st Regiment of the Bengal Infantry, arri\'ing in India in 1829. He rose from
Assistant Commissioner at Chota Nagpur (1843-47) and Aracan (1847-55) to Deputy
Commissioner of Tenasserim and Martaban Province at Amherst (1855), and finally
Commissioner of Pegu (1863 to his retirement two j-ears later). Like Day and
many others of this period, Tickell found opportunity to study natural history and
to exercise his talent for drawing. The result was a number of manuscript works
on the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and invertebrates, with very
many of the species illustrated by excellent watercolours. These were bound in
14 volumes and were presented to the Zoological Society in 1875 :
1. The fishes collected in the seas and freshwaters of British Burma from 1851-64.
Vol. I, 375 pages, with index of contents ; 319 species numbered, and one shark ;
descriptions interspersed with watercolours, the whole neatly written as if prepared
for publication.
2. Mammals (no title page), 214 pages, with index of 49 species ; descriptions
and watercolours as above.
3. Insects, reptiles, amphibians, arachnids and crustaceans (no title page), 256
pages, no index ; no descriptions for the insects.
4-10. Indian Ornithology by Col. S. R. Tickell H.M.Z.S. vols 1-7 ; descriptions
and watercolours, with 276 species figured and 488 species described, also 42 eggs.
11-12. Tickell Aves (no title pages or indexes) ; two volumes of descriptions and
watercolours of some of the species in the preceding volumes.
13-14. Tickell Aves MS. I and II (no title pages or indexes) ; two volumes as
above, 371 and 163 pages.
The bird drawings of the TickeU collection (as also those of Hodgson and C. F.
Sharpe) were hsted by Low et al. (1930), but the fishes have never been studied as a
whole and have only rarely been mentioned (e.g. Hubbs, 1944 ; Myers, 1951). Day
very briefly referred to the Tickell drawings in the Preface (p. v) to the Fishes of
India (1878), which is curious if the collection was generally available at the Zoo-
logical Society from 1875. Tickell, in fact, seems latterly to have lived in Cheltenham
and to have died there (cutting from ? The Times, 20 April 1875 - in Q 566), but it
was not until the following year that Day moved to Kenilworth House and perhaps
he never met Tickell, although it is surprising if he did not then know of the latter's
work.
Day (1888) used the Tickell drawings and descriptions of Burmese fishes to pro-
pose new species or genera, as well as to place some of the names given by Tickell
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 113
in the synonymies of existing species. The following TickeU species are mentioned
in the Supplement to the Fishes of India :
p. 785 ApogoH tickelli MS. p. 215 (new species ; A. poecilopterus of Cantor a junior
synonym)
p. 788 Acanthurus trisiis MS. p. 297 (placed in the synonymy of A. tennenti
Gunther)
p. 791 Malacacantlms [sic] MS. p. 299 (placed in the synonymy of Pseiidochromis)
Malacocanthus coccinicauda MS. p. 299 (placed as a variety of Pseiido-
chromis fuscus ; designated type species of Malacocanthus by Myers,
1951)
Malacocanthus bicolor MS. p. 300 (placed as a variety of Pseudochromis
fuscus)
p. 797 Salarias cruentipinnis MS. p. 313 (new species)
p. 798 Salarias bicolor MS. p. 316 (new species)
p. 802 Platyglossus metager MS. p. 322 (new species)
p. 804 Geneiates MS. p. 316 (placed in the synonymy of Brotula - see also Hubbs,
1944 : 163)
Geneiates feriiginosus MS. p. 316 (tentatively placed in the synonymy of
Brotula mnltibarbata Schlegel ; type species of Geneiates by monotypy
and/or designation by Hubbs, 1944 or by Myers, 1951)
p. 805 Duxordia MS. p. 338 (placed in the synonymy of Leiocassis)
Duxordia fluviatilis MS. p. 338 (new species, placed in Leiocassis)
p. 807 Acanthonotus MS. p. 49 (new genus)
Acanthonotiis argenteus MS. p. 49 (new species)
Abramis cunma MS. p. 53 (new species, placed in Rohtee)
The genus Acanthonotus and seven of the above species present no problems,
being validly described and dating from the Supplement (with Day as author).
However, those that appeared as junior synonyms are not available unless previously
treated as available names (with date and authorship) and used either for a taxon or
as a senior homonym prior to ig6i (International Code for Zoological Nomenclature,
1964 : Article iid). Myers (1951) merely drew attention to these names as 'perhaps'
good species and genera which had been missed in the Zoological Record and the
various generic nomenclators. It seems unlikely that they have ever been used in
the manner specified by the Code and they will probably remain unavailable,
although a case could perhaps be made for the two 'varieties' of Pseudochromis
fuscus (i.e. coccinicauda and bicolor).
Apart from actual or possible iconotypes, the Tickell collection is of interest both
as another source for the identification of Day species and as a fine example of
amateur work by a civil servant. It ranks with the Hardwicke, Hodgson and Sykes
collections and deserves to be studied.
For the production of the plates for his two major works on Indian fishes. Day
used two methods. For the Fishes of Malabar he made his own copper plates,
having toyed with the idea of photolithography but giving it up on account of the
expense (see p. 26). Although great strides had been made with woodcuts in the
latter part of the eighteenth century by men hke Thomas Bewick, they could not
114 P- J. P WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
rival copper or steel engraving for the kind of detail required in drawing fishes.
Thus, Day's initial choice of woodcuts for the Fishes of India was based purely on
the expense, but seeing the possibility of raising the money he soon settled on
lithography, a method that achieved in the plates of Ford 'the acme of accuracy
and beauty of lish illustration ... in England in the iS6os . . .' (Myers, 1971 : 13).
There is no evidence that Day was tempted to try chromolithography, in spite of
Bleeker's use of it for the Atlas plates and his probable championship of the method
when he discussed the illustration of the Fishes of India with Day. In fact, there
was nothing at that time to rival hand-coloured lithography. Chromolithography
produced somewhat muted tones and while this is not unattractive in an Arundel
Society print of the period, it cannot do justice to the vivid colours of many tropical
reef fishes.
DAY'S COLLECTIONS
During the early part of his career in India, and especially at the time that he was
WTiting the Land of the Perniaiils in Cochin, Day's interests covered many aspects
of natural history. His earliest collection seems to have been of birds, but he later
collected insects, crustaceans, reptiles and mammals in addition to his principal
concern, fishes. Some of these collections were made for others, but he kept a
large collection of crustaceans and another of birds until a few months before his
death.
Evidence of one insect collection (he may have made others) comes from a manu-
script Ust of 81 Lepidoptera 'collected in the Neilgherries by F. Day Esq.' which he
pasted into his copy of the paper on fishes from the Xilgiris (Day, 1867a - at p. 24
in his bound volume of reprints. Eg. 14). The specimens evidently went to the
India Office Museum, then at Fife House in Whitehall, since the list is signed by
the curator 'F. Moore London July 1868'. Day's interest in crustaceans is
shown by a notebook that he began (but soon abandoned) on the British brachyurans
(O 649). In a letter to Eduard von Martens in BerUn he said that his collection of
crustaceans, as also reptiles, was large 'but I do not touch these departments'
(5 May 1872, ZMB.MS.). To Peters he wrote.
As regards my reptiles and crustaceans they do not comprise anything hke the
quantity I collected, poor Stoliczka used to have all of the former (reptiles etc)
except such as I included in my fish collection - He returned me many named
and latterly I kept aU to let him see in Europe.
As for crustaceans I collected for Mr Wood Mason [Assistant Curator at the
Indian Museum in Calcutta] who promised to describe them, but did not, how-
ever I think I retained dupUcates of most.
(27 September 1874, ZMB.MS.)
He then offered this collection to Peters and von Martens provided that they
would identify it and return duplicates. This did not include his personal and
perhaps working collection, some four hundred Indian crustaceans, which were
eventually given to the British Museum in 1889 (BMNH.1889.6.17.1-401 ; 8 fur-
ther donations, 61 specimens in all and mostly British, are also Usted). After the
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 115
Great Fisheries Exhibition of 1S83, Day wrote to Edward Meirs at the British
Museum offering the 'stalk-eyed Crustacea' from the Indian Section (3 October 1883,
BMNH.MS. Crustacea Section). Meirs consulted Gunther and noted on the letter
that Gunther would not accept them if it meant that Meirs had to 'work them out'.
Possibly these were the specimens that were eventually donated in 1889.
A further reference to Day's reptile collection appears in another letter to Peters
(17 January 1880, ZMB.MS.) in which he said that 'every specimen of reptile I had
went to Stoliczka' (Ferdinand Stoliczka, who collected on the Second Yarkand
Mission and whose fishes were subsequently described by Day, 1878).
Of mammals, Day certainly collected bats and in his letter to Martens cited above
he said that he believed he had already sent to Peters species from several localities
in India and Burma.
The three collections of birds (1S8 specimens) that Day presented to the museum
at East India House in 1857-58 have already been mentioned (p. 22). When the
museum's Leadenhall premises were abandoned, a large number of specimens were
distributed, but Day's birds were apparently retained since they were eventually
returned to him with the final closing of the museum in 1879 (see below, p. 120).
They may, therefore, have been included in the collection of 375 skins that Day
donated in 1889 to Cambridge (see p. 148). Day also gave bird specimens to Berlin,
since in a letter to Peters he offered a Gallus banskii and 'Any other birds you may
desire, if I have duplicates' (14 October 1874, ZMB.MS.).
The bulk of Day' collection was, of course, fishes. His own estimate of the
number of specimens, made in October 1873 when he had shipped the collection to
England, was 'about 12 000 specimens in spirit, besides skins' (Day, i873e : 747).
An indication of the final size of Day's collection comes from the preface to the Fishes
of India, where he states that, of the 1340 species described, 1185 were in his own
collection. By comparison, it can be noted that in 1858, when Gunther began his
Catalogue, the entire British Museum collection, which had been accumulating since
the middle of the eighteeneth century, numbered only about 16 000 specimens,
although this total had risen to 29 275 or 5177 species by 1870 when the eighth
volume of the Catalogue was pubhshed {Catalogue, Preface : vii). Bleeker's collection,
however, was even larger than Day's and was perhaps the biggest personal collection
of fishes ever made by a working ichthyologist. Prior to his departure for the
Netherlands in i860, Bleeker had already sent large collections to eleven European
museums, Leiden being the most favoured and receiving over 12 000 fishes (Lamme,
1973 : 30). After his death, his vast collection was auctioned and in the Catalogue
Hubrecht (1879) listed some 2297 species comprising about 26 500 specimens ;
even this did not represent the full total since Bleeker had given 1786 species to
the British Museum (Whitehead et al., 1966 : 9) as well as some to Day and perhaps
to others. Day {Fishes of India, Preface, p. iv) gave Bleeker's collection as 2348
species and about 30 000 specimens.
The Bleeker and the Day collections were amongst the last of the really large
private collections of fishes. Few could afford the expense of jars and alcohol and
by the end of the century the days of the amateur fish taxonomist were almost
over. The great private museums of the eighteenth century were overtaken in
p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Day's lifetime by national institutions, either newly founded, like the museums in
Calcutta and Sydney, or given a new lease of life by the energetic social and economic
developments of the Victorian era. Like Bleeker, Day recognized the importance
of these institutions and already in 1872 he envisaged dividing his duplicates amongst
the major European museums 'provided I am permitted free access to their speci-
mens and if they have dupUcates of Indian species which are neither in my collection
nor that of the British Museum being permitted to exchange' (Day to von Martens,
5 May 1872, ZMB.MS.). In fact, Day donated or sold parts of his collection to
twelve institutions and five fractions of the British Museum material were redis-
tributed after his death. Fourteen museums that received Day's Indian fishes are
listed here chronologically and will be discussed in detail.
1865 India Museum, London
1864-70 British Museum, London
1866-70 Govt Central Museum, Madras
1872 Museum of Comparative Zoologj', Harvard
1875 India Museum, London
1866-79 Indian Museum, Calcutta
1874-82 Zoologisches Museum, Berlin
1875-80 Rijksmuseum, Leiden
1875-76 Paris Museum
1880-84 Florence Museum
1880 Genoa Museum
1883 Australian Museum, Sydney
1886-87 Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna
1888-89 British Museum (Natural History), London
1889 Zoological Institute, Leningrad {ex BMNH)
1899 Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
(ex BMNH.)
(p
116)
c. 100 fishes (7 types)
(p
124)
416 fishes (i8 lots)
(p
129)
'a large number'
(p
130)
c. 100 fishes
(p
116)
? 100 fishes
(p
131)
3973 fishes
(p
I3&)
328 fishes (291 spp.).
(p
138)
c. 418 fishes (412 spp.)
(p
142)
48 fishes (48 spp.)
(p
143)
333 fishes (171 spp.)
(p
144)
21 fishes (21 spp.)
(p
144)
c. 2000 fishes (917 spp.)
(p
146)
c. 1050 fishes (865 spp.)
(p
148)
5379 fishes
(p
151)
558 fishes (284 spp.)
(p
151)
452 fishes
a. India Museum, London, 1865-75
Day's earliest donations of natural history specimens (three collections of bird
skins in 1857-58) were to the museum of the Hon. East India Company in London.
The East India Museum or 'Cabinet of Natural and Artificial Products', later known
merely as the India Museum, owed its existence to the numerous collections made
by private individuals and by civil and mUitary members of the Company in the
latter part of the eighteenth century, for which the Court of Directors founded a
pubUc repository in 1701 at East India House in Leadenhall Street (contemporary
engraving of the fagade reproduced by Archer, 1962 : pi. 25). Here could be found
substantial collections of plants, animals and their products, as well as drawings,
made by such men as Major General Hardwicke, Sir Stamford Raffles, Francis
Hamilton-Buchanan, Theodor Cantor, Brian Hodgson, WilUam Griffith, Sir John
Richardson, Thomas Horsfield, William Sykes and John McClelland. In i8ig,
Thomas Horsfield (1773-1859) was appointed the first Keeper of the collections, a
post that he occupied until his death. Horsfield produced a number of catalogues,
some of wliich were pubUshed (e.g. birds and mammals, 1841 ; mammals, 1857),
while others remained as manuscripts (e.g. fishes, see below). From 1848, Frederic
Moore (1830-1907) served as Assistant in the Museum ; the two-volume catalogue
FRANCIS DAY (1829-18S9) 117
of birds (Horsfield & Moore, 1854, 1858) was in fact his work (Sharpe, 1906 : 39).
Cowan (1975) has given useful biographical summaries with references, for both
Horsfield and Moore.
In 1858, with the transfer of the Company's powers and material possessions to
the Crown, the Library and its associated Museum came under the administration
of the newly created Department of State, the India Office (see history of Library
by Arberry, 1938). The Leadenhall premises were abandoned, but a temporary
museum was continued at Fife House in Whitehall, where the natural history col-
lections were exhibited. In 1869, however, with the establishment of the new India
Office in Charles Street (now King Charles Street), it was found that there was no
room to exhibit the natural history collections. These were accordingly stored in
boxes on the premises, more or less inaccessibly in the cellars (Sclater, 1875), or on
'the topmost floor of one of the highest buildings in London' (Anon., 1875 : 252),
much to the indignation of Sclater, Alfred Newton, Alfred Wallace and others who
wanted to work on the material (letters to Nature, 7 : 481, 457-458 ; Nature, 8 : 5).
Four years earlier, Sclater had written to The Times (16 March 1871) citing an actual
occasion when he had attempted to examine a possible type specimen, only to be
told that the boxes were too tightly stacked to be opened. He wrote again (The
Times, 14 June 1873) and this may have triggered a scathing report {The Oriental,
1 : 314-322) which claimed that the natural history collections had 'not been
touched for years . . . they are all lying stuffed away in packing cases, in the Military
Storehouses in the Belvedere Road'. In fact, the India Office Museum had disposed
of a considerable number of specimens during this period, the zoological material
being presented to the British Museum in i860 (about fourteen hundred fishes,
BMNH.1860.3.19.1-1471 ; over five hundred birds, BMNH. i860. 4. 16. 1-584 ; as
well as a number of mammals and several thousand insects).
However, the protests of men like Sclater may have had their effect, for by June
1874 the India Office was negotiating with the Commissioners of the 1851 Exhibition
site at South Kensington for the lease of the eastern galleries in which a new India
Museum could be set up (Minute Paper No. 400, 4 June 1874, SCHC). News of
the move was announced in November (e.g. report in Nature, 11 : 77), the collections
were packed up in December, and by mid-January 1875 they were ready to be
transferred to the new Museum (Minute Papers Nos 303 and 369, SCHC). John
Forbes Watson (1827-92), at that time Reporter on the Products of India as well
as Keeper of the India Museum, was placed in charge of the new Museum (designated
Director in 1878), and George Birdwood (1832-1917) was Curator ; Frederic Moore,
in spite of twenty-five years with the India Office Museum, remained merely an
Assistant Curator (in charge of the zoological collections), together with M. C. Cooke
(vegetable products) and Lieut. J. R. Royle (son of Forbes Royle the botanist) ;
another who was employed by the Museum was Fred. C. Moore, presumably Frederic
Moore's son and the man who later illustrated many books and papers on Lepidoptera,
particularly those by Moore senior (Cowan, 1975 : 275).
On I June 1875 the Museum was formally opened, with fishes and reptiles dis-
played in Room 4 (report in Nature, 12 : 193), but its Life was short. Watson had
submitted a proposal to the Government for the establishment of a permanent India
ii8 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AM) P. K. TALWAR
Museum and Library, but to no avail. Lease of the South Kensington site was not
renewed after three years and in 1879 the Museum was closed down and the material
finally dispersed. Giinther sat on a committee dealing with the distribution of the
India Museum specimens, of which all the zoological material was offered to the
British Museum on Giinther's refusal to let Calcutta have first choice (BMKH.MS.
Doc, 2 : 171, 176, 186). He later commented : 'Although the majority of speci-
mens selected have greatly suffered from the length of time during which they
were kept under very unfavourable conditions, their number and scientific value far
exceeds Dr Giinther's expectations.' (BMNH.MS.Doc, 2 : 257.) Giinther then
wrote to John Anderson at the Indian Museum in Calcutta offering duplicates,
which were accepted, and others were sent to the Indian Institute in Oxford, the
South Kensington Museum, the Dubhn Museum, and the museums at Scarborough
and Maidstone (BMNH.MS.Doc, 2 : 290, 339 ; also BMNH.MS.Misc, 1 : 5). The
British Museum received nearly five thousand birds (112 being types ^ie Sharpe,
1906 : 262), nearly seven hundred mammals (numerous types fide Thomas, 1906 : 40),
but only 131 fishes (BMXH.18S0.2.2.1-131).
On the final closure of the Museum it was decided to give to the British Museum
a quantity of documents relating to the natural history collections. These are now
bound in four volumes entitled :
Documents of the Indian Museum (BMNH.Zool.Libr. 89 q I - hereafter cited as
Documents)
Vol. I (thicker of the two), 335 ff., chiefly relating to birds and mammals
Vol. 2 (thinner volume), 125 ff., chiefly reptiles, fishes and invertebrates
Indian Museum Lists of Collectors (BMNH.Zool.Libr. 89 f I - hereafter cited as
Lists)
Vol. I (thicker volume), 376 ff., including Hsts of donations by Horsfield,
Raffles, Sykes, Reeves, McClelland, Cantor and the Asiatic Society (sent
by Blyth)
Vol. 2 (thinner volume), 221 ff., including Usts of donations by Hodgson,
Moore, Richardson and Gould.
These documents are not very carefully collated, but with patience a great deal
can be learnt of the many valuable collections sent to the India Museum between
1830 and 1879. The India Office (and its pre-1858 counterpart) also kept Day
Books in which were entered new acquisitions. These chiefly related to books, but
in the early years a note was made of the arrival of specimens.
None of Day's collections is mentioned in the Day Books, but five are referred to
in the Documents. The first, of birds, is given as 'May 25th 1857 Presented by
Dr Day A series of 71 specimens of birds from Burmah, Nilgiris & Mysore. See
Museum Nat. Hist. Catal. No 81' (Documents, I : 220). On 8 January 1858 and in
March 1858 a further 27 and 90 birds were presented, each with a reference 'See
list No 81' (same page as before). The list referred to has not been found.
The fourth collection was that of fishes given in 1865. In his Preface to the Fishes
of Malabar (p. vi). Day stated that he had given specimens of 6 out of 19 listed new
species, together with a specimen of Engraulis auratus Day, to the East India
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 119
Museum, and also 'upwards of one hundred species which were personally collected
in Cochin, but of which I possess duplicate specimens'. In a letter to Moore early
in 1865, Day had referred to a part of this donation as 'duplicate acanthopterygians'
which the Museum could have 'as soon as my paper is read' (2 January 1865, ZSL.,
Gladstone Autographs). This collection is important for the types that it contained,
but unfortunately the various documents are not consecutive and there is some
doubt whether or not 'A series of fish (skins) about 100 Presented by Dr F. Day.
(see list in General Registry)' truly refers to this donation. The information was
evidently written much later since it is on paper headed 'India Museum South
Kensington', the latter being deleted and 'Feb. 1865' added in ink {Documents,
2 : 94). Four pages later is a folio entitled 'List of Fish 1879 F. Moore' and im-
mediately after are five numbered folios in Day's hand giving a list of fishes, arranged
by numbered families. Approximately 120 species are given, with locality and
often '(Spirit)' or '(bottle)'. Some 34 species are marked 'Cochin Day', 14 are
labelled 'Malabar', but others are given as 'Madras', 'Madras Mus.', 'Penang Cantor'
or 'Schr (Schlagintweit). To this list have been added in pencil 18 species marked
'Paris Exh. 1878' and a further 28 (also in pencil and perhaps by Moore) make up
a separate list ; there were also 7 plaster casts. Preceding each name is a number
(1-7, perhaps being bo.\ or jar numbers) and following each is another set of numbers
whose significance is difficult to interpret (4.1, 6.1, 2.1, 4.2, 2.|).
The list itself is undated and there can be no certainty that it refers to the donation
of 1865 (there are no other lists of Day material, however). A note in pencil at
the top of the fourth page states : 'The following families are from Day's Malabar
Fishes', but this could have been added subsequently and may perhaps only refer
to the 28 species names in pencil. Of the 19 new species listed by Day in the Preface
to the Fishes of Malabar, there are seven which appear in ink in this list and may
thus have been his types :
Banlius bakeri (Spirit) Travancore Day
Puntius paral [i.e. parrah] Cochin Day
Puntius denisoni (Bottle) Cochin Day
Garra malabarica (Spirit) Malwa Schl[agintweit]
Hara malabarica [no data]
Engraulis auraius (Spirit) Malabar Day
Mastacembelus [i.e. perhaps M. guentheri]
In the original description of Garra malabarica, however, there is no mention of
Malwa as a locality.
Of Day's donation of butterflies from the Nilgiris, for which Moore had sent to
Day a list of identifications (see above, p. 114), no mention has been found in either
the Documents or the Lists.
In a description of the India Museum shortly after its opening at South Kensington
in 1875 {Nature, 12 : 192-193), the paucity of reptiles and fishes was remarked, but
with the promise that 'this section will shortly be enriched by the extensive and
valuable collections formed by the Inspector-General of Indian Fisheries'. In fact,
no new collections of fishes came to the India Museum from Day. In May 1874 the
I20 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
India Office Museum had received a small collection, recorded as '1874 May 21
Dr Day -various samples of stuffed fish from Cochin, &c.' (Documents, 1 : 104),
which was possibly the material referred to in the Ust above. Ho\ve\-er, what Dav
desperately wanted the new India Museum to buy was his t\-pe collection in order
to pay for the extra plates for the FisJies of India (see p. 53 above). In perhaps
October 1S74 he offered to sell this collection, numbering 4000 specimens (Minute
Paper of 24 November 1874, not found but inferred from Minute Paper No. 910,
24 December 1875, SCHC, in which the cost to 'set them up' was estimated at £200).
Apparently, this sale was agreed, but the following year it was decided merely to
accept the specimens on loan (Resolution of Council, 22 March 1875 ; inferred from
footnotes on Minute Paper No. 910). The reason for this change of heart laj' with
the initially divided opinion on the role of the India Museum. Certain members
of the Council of India, and in particular Sir Erksine Perry, took the view that the
cost of the Museum could only be charged to Indian Revenues if the exhibitions
were restricted to those objects that were raw materials or manufactured products
of practical interest to the people of India ; existing natural history specimens might
be accepted for temporary display but would ultimately be disposed of (a view
accepted by Council in a Resolution of 22 January 1875 ; see also Perry's printed
statement, item 375, SCHC). It must have been at this point that Day entered
into negotiations with Ford for the purchase of his type collection, leading eventually
to the sale of these specimens to the Calcutta Museum (see p. 53 above). Mean-
while, he offered a second and smaller collection to the India Museum, this time a
mere 800 species, 'hmiting liis selection to such as are used as Food in different
parts of India' (Minute Paper No. 910). It is not clear whether these were offered
as a loan, a gift or for sale, but when Forbes Watson requested £160 for bottles and
alcohol, even this was turned down by the Council (16 January 1876, footnote to
Minute Paper No. 910). It was presumably this collection that was exhibited at
the 1883 International Exhibition and eventually sold to the Australian Museum in
Sydney (see p. 144 below).
With the closing of the India JIuseum in 1879, some of the specimens were re-
turned to their donors. Thus, against the lists of bird skins donated by Day
{Documents, 1 : 220) is a pencilled note 'The above specimens were returned to
Dr Da}- by Official Order F. Moore'. These would almost certainly be the bird
skins that Day subsequently sent to Cambridge (see above, p. 148). Against the
Ust of fish specimens given by Day (Documents, 2 : 98) there is a similar pencilled
note indicating return of the material in December 1879. The circumstances of
this return are, inevitably, bound up with Day's quarrel with Gunther, for Day had
been horrified to see from the newspaper that the India Museum intended to make
over its zoological specimens to the British Museum. In a letter to the India
Office he pointed out that 'during most of the period I have been compihng "The
Fishes of India" for the Indian Government I have only experienced obstruction
from the British Museum to examine specimens' (letter of 14 July 1879, attached
to Minute Paper No. 4817, SCHC). The matter was submitted for consideration,
but Day wrote again in November, this time to Sir Louis Mallet the Under-Secretary
for State, requesting the return of 'the collection which I presented to the Museum
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 121
of the E.I. Co & fish which I also sent to the same institution in 1S64-65' (letter of
II November 1879, attached to Memorandum No. 5258, SCHC). Birdwood ap-
parently wrote 'a private and confidential note' asking if Day had any written
evidence that conditions of any sort had been attached to the donation, and in reply
received 'Dr Day's characteristic letter' of ig November which began 'Of course if
you as an Official of the India Office dechne to return to me my collections of fish
and birds deposited in the India Museum intending to make them a present else-
where, all I can do is to protest against such a course, etc. . . .' (Memorandum
No. 5258 and attached letters, SCHC). In the end, of course, Day got his way.
Thus, the possible syntypes of the Malabar species will have been amongst the
material returned to him. Since he was still dispersing his collections (Leiden until
1882, Sydney 1883, Florence 1880-84, Vienna 1886), there can be no certainty that
these syntypes came to the British Museum with Day's final donation of 1889.
However, it has been argued that, because of its locaHty (Malabar), one of the two
specimens of Engraulis auratiis in the British Museum (Natural History) must be
the specimen formerly in the India Museum (Talwar & Whitehead, 1971 : 78).
Possibly a similar case could be made for some of the other syntypes.
The two major dispersals of India Museum material, in 1859-61 and 1879-80,
were not the only ones, however. The lists in the Documents show that numerous
small collections were given away between 1830 and the closing of the Leadenhall
premises after 1858. Sharpe (1906 ; 395), for example, listed three other bird
collections (91 specimens sent in 1842, 1845, 1856) and the Documents (1) show that
a further 217 birds and 52 mammals were sent to the British Museum as early as
1830. In the Day Books an entry for 10 May 1831 reads 'Abstract copy of Duplicates
from the Zoological & Entomological collections presented to various scientific
bodies'. Apparently, there was sufficient duplicate material at this time and up
to 1858 to send other bird and mammal specimens to the Zoological Society and
London University, to Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool, Dubhn and Edinburgh, to
the Norwich Natural History Society and William Swainson, and to Heidelberg,
Genoa and Senckenberg. Birds especially were pouring into the Museum and
Horsfield evidently only kept the best.
It was during this pre-Mutiny period that some important fish collections came
to the India Museum. Theodor Cantor (1809-54), for example, sent several general
collections, totalling about twelve thousand specimens, in the period 1842-54. His
most important fish collection was that referred to in a memorandum as 'specimens
collected from May 1842 to September 1845, while I held the office of Civil Surgeon
of Prince of Wales Island (Pulo Pinang)' {Lists, 1 : 330). Elsewhere, there is a
list of this material, headed 'These are the original specimens, referred to in "Cata-
logue of the Malayan Fishes" . . .' {Lists, 1 : 351-358).
In the i860 transfer of specimens from the India Museum to the British Museum,
there were 1461 fishes (numbered 1-1471 in the Register, but the 8oo's miscounted).
None of these has the collector named, but in 64 there is a locality - Chusan. Since
this is where Cantor worked (July 1840 to March 1841), these specimens at least
must be Cantor's. His Malayan and other specimens were also in this collection,
which Boulenger (1906 : 536) stated contained 'the types described by Cantor', and
122 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
these were presumably labelled in some way. The dried specimens (skins) in the
British Museum have now been sorted (by Mr A. C. Wheeler) and the Cantor and
other types labelled as such. The older types in alcohol, on the other hand, often
rest on Giinther's indications in the Catalogue and should not be taken at face value.
The smaU donation from the India Museum registered at the British Museum in
1880 (131 specimens) includes the following fishes stated to be from Cantor'scoUection :
BMNH.1880.2.2.99. Ophiiirus baccidens
110-112. Monocanthiis geographicus
113-114. Astrape dipterygia
115-116. Synancea elongata
130-131. [no name]
Also, '98. Cliipeonia perforata Malayan Seas' is most likely a Cantor specimen,
although it is not the type. Giinther (1868a : 424) identified the latter as a specimen
from the i860 donation (BMNH. 1860.3. 19. 845 - merely given as Clupea in the
Register) and subsequent work has confirmed that choice (Whitehead, 1964 : 41).
In addition to specimens, Cantor presented to the Court of Directors a manu-
script entitled 'General features of Chusan &c.' and also his collection of drawings
entitled 'Sketches illustrative of the Descriptive Catalogue of Animals collected at
Chusan . . .' [Day Books, 7 September and 10 August 1842). The drawings, which
comprise 142 subjects (10 fishes), are bound in a single volume in the India Office
Library ; five are by Cantor himself and these, together with one other, are from
Penang, the remainder being Chinese copies of his Chusan drawings (including the
originals of his 12 plates for the Zoology of Chusan, 1842 - see Archer, 1962 : 76-77
for details).
Another important donor to the India Museum was William Sykes (1790-1S72).
On his retirement from India in 1S31, Sykes presented to the Museum some 4033
specimens, mainly birds, insects and plants, but with a few fishes amongst the 118
'animals in spirits' [Lists, 1 : 48). These were received on 23 July 1831 and were
recorded in the Day Books as '9 chests off Lady Feversham - containing Major
Sykes' Collection of Natural History made in the Peninsula - '. He also gave 194
drawings plus a further 27 of freshwater fishes {Lists, 1 : 58). Archer (1962 : 89 ;
1969 : 560) was able to find only g botanical and 11 topographical drawings in the
India Office Library, but she mentioned the large collection of Sykes' notes and
drawings in the British Museum (Natural History). In the Day Books (2 November
1831) it is stated that the Library received no less than 49 volumes of 'MS. Major
Sykes' Papers respecting his collections Presented to the Court.', but it is not
clear if these included drawings. Sykes died seven years before the final closing
of the India Museum in 1879, but the bulk of his notes and drawings may have
been returned to his heirs, these perhaps being the volumes acquired in 1920 by the
British Museum (Natural History) from Henry Sothern & Co., Sale Catalogue No. 776.
There are 21 volumes in all, of which 10 are marked Agriculture (notes, drawings of
implements, some plants), 10 are marked Drawings (botanical and zoological water-
colours, total 281, each neatly numbered), and one large volume is marked Reports
on Dakhin. The latter contains descriptions of animals, 40 drawings, and some
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 123
meteorological notes for 1829 (mammals, pp. 1-183 ; birds, pp. 185-606 ; fishes,
pp. 609-657 ; reptiles, pp. 661-670 ; meteorology, pp. 673-756). The ichthyology
section contains 12 drawings of fishes. There are no fish drawings in the Agriculture
volumes, but in the Drawings series there are 31 fishes (2 in vol. 4, 2 in vol. 6, 5 in
vol. 7, 18 in vol. 8 and 4 in vol. 9). All have a careful note of the locality and date,
together with one or two vernacular names, but the scientific name is either absent,
added later or corrected. Twelve of these drawings appear to be the originals for
those in the Reports. According to Archer (1962 : 89), all the drawings e.xcept a
few small sketches were done not by Sykes himself but by Bombardier Llewellen
Fidlor who accompanied him on his surveys.
The ichthyological notes are in two parts. The first is an introduction and an
e.xposition of Hamilton-Buchanan's arrangement of Ganges fishes, the most impor-
tant work available at the time. The second part contains descriptions of 46 fishes
(30 said to be new) and is the draft of Sykes' paper on the 'Fishes of Dukhun', first
presented to the Court of Directors in June 1831 and later sent, re-drafted, re-
arranged and with 42 new species named, to the Zoological Society in November
1838 (Sykes, 1841 : 377, footnote). The manuscript contains almost nothing that
was not subsequently published (a few notes on weights of fishes in the margin).
The 12 drawings mentioned above were part of the 28 coloured illustrations that were
published with the paper and are indicated as having been returned from the
Zoological Society in March 1857 ; the remaining 16 drawings all appear in the Draw-
ings series. Apart from drawings of three species not included in the illustrations
to Sykes' paper, the only additional information that can be got from this manu-
script material is the individual sizes, dates and localities of the figured fishes,
which is consistently given in the Drawings. Thus, Hypophthalmus goongwaree
was 135 mm S.L. and H. taakree 216 mm, but there is no guarantee that Sykes kept
his figured specimens.
The question of Sykes' types has been mentioned earlier (p. 68). In the Preface
to the Fishes of India (p. iv). Day stated that the Sykes specimens that came to the
British Museum were not labelled, but he seems to have forgotten the statement
by Giinther (1872 : 877) that two or three specimens had arrived with the name of
Colonel Sykes written on the label, although all or most had no other information
except, in Gunther's recollection, perhaps a name but not the true one. Certainly,
there is no mention of Sykes (or any other collector for that matter) in the British
Museum Register for the large i860 donation. In the Catalogue (vol. 5) Giinther
did not list any specimens at all for Hypophthalmus taakree (p. 52) or H. goongwaree
(p. 61) and indeed gave the first merely as a footnote name. On the other hand,
he was able to recognize two types of Schilbe pabo Sykes (p. 46), which suggests that
the Sykes specimens were haphazardly labelled. In the smaller donation of 1880,
however, the following 16 fishes are indicated as being from Sykes' Dukhun collection :
BMNH.1S80.2.2.100. Toxotes 105-6. Mastacembelus
101-2. Echeneis 107. [no name]
103. Echeneis 108. Silurus
104. Cyprinidae 109. Cobites 7 Spec"*
124 P J- P WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Although Echeneis could hardly have come from the Deccan, No. 103 is in fact an
Echeneis labelled 'Dukhim Col. Sykes Ind. Mus. Coll.' Some specimens could have
perhaps been types, but they arrived much too late to enter into the argument
between Gunther and Day. The latter at least must have examined the collections
in the India Museum, but there were only a few Sykes fishes and these had been
incorporated in 1831, long before Sykes had given them their new names. It must
be remembered too that the India Museum collections were more or less inaccessible
during the period 1869 to 1875 and were probably not well arranged at Fife House
prior to this. Day (i873e : 747) went so far as to suggest that Sykes might have
given his tj'pes to other naturalists, Riippell and Yarrell having certainly examined
the material (Sykes, 1841 : 355). Thus the chances of locating t\'pes for more than a
very few of Sykes' species are remote.
Other important donors of fishes to the India Museum were Edward Blyth (1810-
73), who sent fishes from the museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta,
of which he became Curator in 1841 (Lists, 1 : 109, 131) ; and John McClelland
(1800-83), who apparently sent collections in 1841, 1843 and 1856 (Lists, 1 : 143,
171 and 174-176). Boulenger (1906 : 536) claimed that the types of McClelland's
cyprinid fishes came to the British Museum in 1859, but they are not given in the
Register for that year and were almost certainly part of the i860 donation (pre-
sumably with some indication on the specimen since there is none in the Register).
In 1839, Cantor made a small catalogue of the snakes and reptiles in the India
Museum, at the same time presenting some fishes collected while he was attached
as Surgeon to the Company's Marine Survey in the Ganges Delta (Documents,
2 : 79, 83). A more comprehensive catalogue of the fishes in the museum was pre-
pared by Horsfield in 1856, but again this was never published. It is headed
'Catalogue of the Fishes in the Museum of the Hon. East India Company. By Dr
Horsfield. 1856' (Documents, 2 : 44-78). It consists of 68 pages with small slips
pasted four to the page (total 272 items) and it contains reference to specimens
collected or presented by Blyth, Cantor, Griffith, Richardson, Tytler, Sykes, etc.,
but there are no Day specimens.
Together with the museum of the Zoological Society, the India Museum was one
of the most important repositories for Asiatic specimens during the early part of the
nineteenth century. It was overtaken by the middle of the century by the British
Museum, chiefly as a result of Giinther's initiative in soliciting specimens, and it is
significant that it was to the British Museum that both the India Museum and
that of the Zoological Society disposed the bulk of their specimens. The central-
izing of these collections was probably inevitable, but one can only regret that in
both cases the specimens arrived at the British Museum with such inadequate data.
b. British Museum, 1864-yo
The Accession Register shows that in the early part of his ichthyological career
Day presented or sold 18 collections to the British Museum, totalling 416 fishes,
13 amphibians and 42 reptiles ; the types of over sixty of his fish species were
included. These collections were received in three distinct periods. Those of
1864-65 were evidently brought back by Day on his second period of leave and at
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 125
least one batch was delivered personally to Giinther by Brisbane Neill on 4 January
1865 (see p. 000) ; these collections were all presented, and they totalled 37
specimens of 28 species of fishes. Day next sent specimens to the British Museum
in 1867-68 and these were all dispatched from India and purchased through
Brisbane Neill. They stemmed from Day's time in the Nilgiris, Kurnool and
Madras and comprised 195 specimens of 123 fish species. The third series were all
presented in 1870 and would be specimens that Day brought with him when he
returned to England on leave. These collections comprised 184 specimens of 144
species. After that, Day sent no more specimens to the British Museum for almost
twenty years, his final collection to the British Museum being that of 1888 (or
1889 - discussed on p. 148).
For the specimens sold to the British Museum in 1867-68, Day made dated lists
on spare pages bound in at the back of his proof copy of the Fishes of Malabar
(O602). Unfortunately, these lists rarely give a locaUty and only in one case is
there a possible indication of type status [Caraiix nigrescens 't p'). For the first of
these listed collections, dispatched 27 March 1867 and containing 20 fish species and
2 amphibians. Day wrote what appears to be the price paid, £6.10.0; in the
previous year Bleeker was apparently paid 10 shillings per specimen by the British
Museum (Whitehead, Boeseman & Wheeler, 1966 : 12). It is of interest to note that,
following the final batch (sent with Chipperfield in about June 1868), Day wrote
firmly 'No more fish to be sent to BM FD'. There are, however, two more batches
listed after this, designated merely 'No i August' and 'No 2', containing fishes from
Pondicherry, Tranquebar and the Cauvery river (21 species, but 7 not named).
Since these cannot be matched with the data in the Accession Register, they may
perhaps be material that was given to the Madras Museum or even Calcutta. None
is a Day species. By 1870, however. Day had relented and he once again presented
fishes to the British Museum.
In those days little information was entered in the Accession Registers, so that
for the Day collections there is sometimes only a generic name, which may or may
not correspond to that first used by Day, or there may be only a family name, or
even no name at all. Likewise, locality data are sometimes missing and in very few
instances is there any reference to type status (see p. 149-150). Such information
existed, however, perhaps as labels inside the bottles, since the jars are now labelled
with locality and many types have been marked as such. In fact, Giinther kept
five lists sent by Day (those accompanying the specimens of 1867-68) and these are
now filed with Day's letters in the letter-books of the Zoology Department
(BMNH. MS. Z., folios 104-109). In these lists Day indicated which specimens
he considered to be types and these will be discussed below.
The eighteen collections sent by Day will be reviewed chronologically (actually
sent in more than eighteen batches, but at least three registered together in
November 1S67).
First series, 1864-65
I. BMNH. 1864.7.9.3-8 (5 fishes, i reptile)
All from 'Hill ranges of Travancore, Malabar' ; all with generic names ;
126 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
total of 3 fish species. Specimens of Pun tins denisonii and P. melanatnpyx
(Labeo types) included, as also Gunther's Catopra malabarica.
2. BMXH.1864.10.5.1 (I fish)
Skin of Mesopn'on borensis from Madras.
3. BMNH.1865.1.19.8 (I fish)
Specimen of Mugil poiciliis from Cochin (type).
4. BMNH.1865.7.17.1-27 (27 fishes)
A locality (Cochin) is given for only 6 species ; all are identified to species
except 8 specimens (Siluridae, Teiithis, Caranx, Clupea, Tetradon, Maslacem-
belus) ; total of 20 species. The collection contains the following 13 out of
the 19 new species that Day said he had presented to the British Museum
(FM., Preface : vi).
Paradanio aurolineatus Pseudobagrus chryseus
A^nblypharyngodon jerdoni Hypselobagrtts armatits
Pmitius vittatiis M astacembelns guentheri
Pimtius perlce Ophiocephalus diplogramme
Puntius parrah Caranx inelanostethos
Garra malabarica
Platacanthus agrensis
Nemacheiliis triangularis
In our Table of potential types (p. 154) we have given preference to these
specimens and have omitted specimens of these species received in subsequent
batches.
Of the 6 remaining species from Day's published list, 3 had already been
donated {Puntius denisonii and P. melanampyx in collection No. i above ;
Mugil poicilus in collection No. 3). On the other hand, Hara malabarica and
Nandus malabaricus are in neither the present batch nor in any subsequent
ones. The final missing species is Barilins bakeri, of which a type specimen
(BMNH.1866.5.2.91) has hitherto been recognized from a large collection of
Bleeker's fishes received in 1866 (see also Giinther, 1868a : 285). In fact,
4 more of the Day species listed above appear in this same Bleeker collection
[A. jerdoni, P. aurolineatus, P. denisonii and G. malabarica), but not the missing
Hara and Nandus. It is true that Day had sent a specimen of Catopra
malabarica and certain other Cochin species to Bleeker in 1865 (see p. 142),
but it seems urdikely that Bleeker would have almost immediately sold these
to the British Museum. Possibly Day's specimens were partly mi.xed with
Bleeker's during incorporation.
The types of Puntius parrah and P. perlee also present a problem since
Giinther (1868 : 142) claimed that the type of perlee matched better with the
description of parrah, while the type of parrah agreed with neither and was
probably new.
5. BMNH. 1865. 10.22. 1-3 (3 fishes)
No names or localities ; presumably 3 species. One of the specimens was
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 127
Day's Nemacheihis triangularis, of which a specimen had already been
included in the previous batch.
Second series, 1867-68
6. BMNH. 1867. 5. 30.1-27 (27 fishes)
Mainly marine fishes, the first being stated as from Madras, the remainder
implied as such but from the evidence of the labels on the jars clearly not ; all
identified to species except one [Schilbe) ; total of 20 species. Included are
specimens of Day's Seriolichthys lineolatus, Platacanthus agrensis and
Trichiurus malabaricus, the first probably a type, the second already sent in
the fourth batch, and the third labelled 'Madras' on the jar and thus not from
the type locahty (Malabar). The batch was sent on 27 March (0 602).
7. BMNH. 1867.7. 24.1-55 (55 fishes)
All from the Nilgiris or rivers on or around their bases ; all identified to species ;
total of 25 species, of which the following 12 were indicated as 'Nov. Spec'
by Day in his hst to Giinther (BMNH. MS. Z., folio 104, dated 15 January
1867) :'
Paradanio elegans Nemacheilus guentheri
Barilius rugosus Nemacheilus denisoni
Rasbora neilgherriensis Garra jcrdoni
Paradanio neilgherriensis Rasbora t&oolaree
Puntius grayi Hypselobagrus vella
Nemacheilus semiarniatus Chela argentea
In the end. Day did not use the name Hypselobagrus vella. Two further
species are marked 'Day', Paradanio aurolineatus and Amblypharyngodon
jerdoni. but specimens of these had already been presented in the fourth
batch. The present batch is not among the lists in 602.
8. BMNH. 1867. 8. II. 1-20 (i fish, 9 amphibians, 10 reptiles)
The single fish is merely given as Muraena in the Register. The list is headed
'Neilgherries', but this has been deleted. No record in O 602.
9. BMNH. 1867. 11.6.1-41 (35 fishes, 6 reptiles)
All given as 'Madras' in the Accession Register ; all but one (Serrajius) named
to species ; total of 25 fish species. Two original lists by Day survive,
apparently sent with the specimens but with no type indications
(BMNH. MS. Z., folios 105 and 106, dated 27 June 1867 and June 1867, the
second list incomplete and damaged). According to lists in O 602, these
were sent in three or four batches (9 May, ? 10 June, 18 June and 27 June),
but with no locality data.
10. BMNH.1868.4.15.1-12 (11 fishes, I amphibian)
No localities given in Accession Register ; all with species names ; total of
6 fish species. Day's original list gives the following information on types
(BMNH.MS.Z., folio 107, dated 9 November 1868) :
128 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Brotula maculata typical specimen [in fact 2 fishes]
Gobiiis madraspatensis 2 pairs of typical specimens
Gobius neilli I think the original
Panchax argentea '\ partly described from
„ rubrostigma ) [the second in fact a Jerdon species]
According to the list in Q 602, this batch was brought back to England by
Col. Kitson, having been packed in February 1868 ; no locality data given
in list.
11. BMNH.186S.5.14.1-14 (13 fishes, I reptile)
No locaUties given in Accession Register ; all with species names ; total of
12 fish species. Day's list to Giinther gives the following information on
types (BMXH.MS.Z., folio loS, dated 10 March 1868) :
Cossyphus neilli (Day) typical
Scorpaena rosea (Day) typical
Silurus punctatus (Day) partly used for the description in Zool. 2 speci-
mens
Euctenogobius striatus (Day) to be described in Zool. proceed, shortly
Upenoides guttatus (Day) [no comment]
According to the list in Q 602, these were given to Dr Shortt on 23 March
1868 to bring to England ; no locahty data given in hst.
12. BMNH. 1868. 10.27. 2-54 (53 fishes, of which 16 were skins)
Localities Madras, Bowany and Kurnool given ; all with species names
e.xcept 10 (SciaeHa, Teitthis, Triacanthtis, Garra, Rasbora, Miiraenesox) ; total
of 34 species. A note by Giinther in the Accession Register states : 'The
duphcates placed in store not registered', this referring to 5 of the skins.
Day's hst to Giinther is headed 'List of fish sent by Dr Chipperfield round the
Cape about June 20th 1868' and at the end 'As I was going to be absent some
months from Madras the foregoing contain some of my finest specimens'
(BJIXH.MS.Z., folio 109, undated but with note by Giinther 'Reed Dr Neill
14 October 1868'). Day gave the following information on types :
Bottle No. I
[Barbtis] guentheri (Day) 2 typical Kurnool
,, ,, lepidtis (Da}') i ,, Bowany
Bottle No. 2
Platacanthus maculatiis (Day) typical specimen Madras
Pncanthtis [sic] Madraspatensis (Day) i. typical specimen Madras
Rhynichichthys ornatus (Day) i. ,, ,, ,, Madras
Barbus vittatus (Day) 4. 1.1. 20 [no further comment ; already sent in
1865]
Danio lineatus 5 typical specimens
Stuffed specimens some very large
2 Barbus neilli typical specimens one 36 inches long weighed upwards of
13 lbs Kurnool
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 129
I Caranx nigrescens (Day) typical Madras
Three lists are given in Q 602 (i.e. Bottle No. i, Bottle No. 2 and stuffed
specimens), with localities only for the first. These lists are undated and
merely state 'By Dr Chipperfield".
Third series, 1870
13. BMNH.1870.5.2.1-22 (22 fishes)
Two localities given, Calicut and Wynaad ; all with species names except 4
{Ambassis, Nemacheilus) ; total of 13 species. Day's address in the Accession
Register (not a normal practice) is noted as 'Gt Russel St'.
14. BMNH.1870.5.18.1-86 (77 fishes, 8 reptiles, i amphibian)
Five locahties given (Malabar, Wynaad, Andamans, Nicobars, Burma) ; all
fully named e.xcept 17 (Apogon, Mesoprion, Plcsiops, Gobius, Muraena,
Caranx, Serranus, Cubiceps) ; total of 66 fish species.
15. BMNH.1870.6.14.1-72 (69 fishes, 3 reptiles)
Six localities given (Orissa, Andamans, Burma, Pinang, Singapore, Abyssinia,
the latter perhaps visited on voyage back to England). All fully named
except 27 [Glyphidodon, Gobius, Engranlis, Platycephalus, Ambassis, Percidae,
Scoliodon, Leuciscus, Gasterosteus, Blennius, Atherina, Bagrus, Hemiramphus,
Corica, Mastacembelus, Pleuronectidae) ; total of 55 fish species.
16. BMNH. 1870.6. 18.5-7 (3 reptiles)
No localities ; 2 skins and i skull of crocodiles.
17. BMNH.1870.7.12.1-11 (8 fishes, 3 reptiles)
Three locahties given (Orissa, Burma, Nicobars) ; all with species names
except for 2 (Trichopterus, Syngnathus) ; total of 7 fish species.
18. BMNH. 1870. 8. 14. 4-16 (8 fishes, 7 reptiles, 3 amphibians)
No localities given ; i fish with generic name only [Muraena) ; total of 3
fish species.
The final collection sent by Day to the British Museum (1888-89) will be dealt
with separately (see p. 148).
c. Government Central Museum, Madras, 1866-68
In an undated letter to George Shaw (0 654, therefore probably from Ootacamund
in 1866), Day wrote that he had made a 'splendid collection of the fishes [of the
Nilgiris] and hope to send a large number to the Madras Museum'. This museum
was an obvious place for Day to deposit specimens, at least in the period 1866-68
when he was at Ootacamund, Kurnool and in Madras itself. However, he seems
later to have crossed swords with Captain J. Mitchell, the Superintendent of the
Museum, with the result that he was 'unable to obtain leave from the Curator to
inspect the fishes in that institution, neither had an appeal to the local Government
a more fortunate result' (Day, 1871b : 97). After Mitchell's death and George
Bidie's succession to the post. Day may well have sent specimens again, although
from 1871 he was much more involved with the museum in Calcutta.
I30 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Unfortunately, the Madras Government Museum has been unable to find for us
any specimens, letters, registers or catalogues relating to Day or his collections.
However, it is stated in the registers of the Zoological Survey of India in Calcutta
that several specimens of Day's fishes were purchased from the Madras Museum at
some time between 1876 and 1S79. Possibly other Madras specimens were
transferred at a later date.
The Madras Museum is mentioned by Day in two letters that he wrote in 1889 to
William Flower, at that time Director of the British Museum (Natural History).
In the first. Day enclosed a letter from .Madras and said 'if I erroneouslj' omitted
sending the fish and they are taken to the B.M. please let Mr Thurston have them - I
am almost confident I sent them to him - I find a stuffed Cephaloptera of his was
taken to the B.M.' (18 February 1889, BMNH.MS.Z.). Three weeks later he thanked
Flower (or Giinther) for letting him know, and he added : T am glad the Gobius
thurstoni is found as it is the property of the Madras Museum will you kindly rectifv
my error' (7 March 1S89, BMXH.MS.Z.). Gohius thurstoni was a species that Day
had described the previous year in the Supplement to the Fishes of India and the
implication is that Day had borrowed material from Edgar Thurston, Superintendent
of the Madras Museum (probably while the latter was in England on leave), and
that it had been mixed with the final collection to the British Museum. In May,
Thurston wrote to Giinther from Madras to acknowledge receipt of a specimen of
Mylobatis 'returned as desired by Mr Day with your letter of the 7th ultimo' (22 Ma\-
i88g, BMNH.MS.Z.) ; he later acknowledged the return of 'my small fishes with
numbers attached', but asked if he could have a list of identifications (8 June 1889,
BMNH.MS.Z.). For some reason, this batch did not include the holotype of Gohius
thurstoni ; the species was described from a single specimen which must be the one
included in Day's final gift to the British Mu.seum and registered as BMNH.1S89.2.1.
3445. Similarly, Apogon thurstoni, a specimen of Arnbassis myops and Day's
holotype of AcanthocUnus indicus (which is also possibly a Thurston specimen),
were aU subsequently incorporated into the British Museum collections. Since
the Madras Museum cannot now trace any Day specimens, nor even any documents
relating to Day, it is just as well that these few Thurston specimens were not
returned.
d. Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, i8y2
The sympathetic letter written to Day by Richard Bliss (see p. 68), commiser-
ating over Giinther's 'personalities', was dated 22 July 1872. By this time Harvard
had already received a small collection of fishes from Da}', recorded in the Register
as 'received from Dr F. Day in exchange Jan. 23, 1872'. It seems likely that the
initiative for this exchange came from Louis Agassiz, who was at that time rapidly
building up the Harvard collections. In October 1872 the first part of this Day
collection was entered in the Register, but for some reason Bliss completed and
signed only the first two pages (Reg. Nos 4226-4275), all of which were given name
and locality. Thereafter, perhaps in more than one hand, the list becomes very
scrappy, with many gaps or with names and localities misspelt (probably from
Day's list). For one fish (No. 4286) the locality was originally given as 'Canara',
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 131
but 'Cuba Poey' has been substituted. Thus, it is not possible to give an exact
number of either species or specimens, but in total the numbers run from 4226 to
4325, so presumably Day sent a round number of one hundred specimens.
There are 9 species attributed to Day in the list ; all are spurious. However,
there are in fact 10 of Day's species included and these may be found to be types
although none was indicated as such (apart from a cancelled statement that 'Nos
4267 to 4329 Types of Day's Malabar Fishes').
4270 Barbus thomasi (sic) Canara 4292 Barbus dubiiis Bowany
4276 Ophiocephalus diplogramme 4299 Barbus lepidus Canara
4280 Bagrus chryseus Malabar 4303 Barbus punctatus Canara
4282 Barbus jardayii (sic) Canara 4314 Barbus vittatus Canara
4291 Barbus ivyhaadenni (sic) Vithry 4316 Etroplus canarensis Canara
e. Indian Museum, Calcutta, i866-yg
Day's specimens now in the collections of the Zoological Survey of India in Cal-
cutta date back to donations made as early as 1866 to the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
Day had become a member of the Asiatic Society in 1869 and in that year he had
also worked on their collections and especially on the types of species described by
Edward Blyth (Day, 1869b). However, the major collection of Day's fishes in
Calcutta was not received until after the Asiatic Society's museum had been trans-
ferred (at least in name) to the Indian Museum.
The Asiatic Society, founded in 1784 by Sir William Jones, did not initially have a
museum. Inevitably, specimens accumulated and in 1814, largely at the instiga-
tion of Nathaniel WalUch (1786-1854), a museum was formally begun 'for the
reception of all articles that might be sent to illustrate Oriental manners or history,
or to elucidate the pecuUarities of Art or Nature in the East' (Mookerjee, 1914 ;
see also Prashad, 1931 : 34). WaUich was appointed Superintendent, although
for two periods he was obliged to combine his duties with those of Superintendent
of the East India Company's Botanic Garden and at times he found the curation
of the museum beyond him. In 1820, for example, he pointed to the ill state of
the museum and recommended that it be looked after by a man on a salary (note to
? Secretary of Society, 10 March 1820, letter 188, File 171, Asiatic Society Library*).
In 1836, owing to the failure of Palmer & Co., the Society's bankers, the museum
could no longer be properly financed. Appeals to the Government for help eventu-
ally brought a small grant in 1839. Meanwhile WalUch was succeeded by a number
of Curators, including McClelland and, in September 1841, Edward Blyth, who did
much to augment the vertebrate collections. By 1856, however, it was clear that
the Society's museum could only continue as part of a nationally supported institu-
tion and in 1862 the Government finally agreed to implement the Society's proposals
for an Imperial Museum in Calcutta. With the passing of the Indian Museum Act
* File 171 in the manuscript collection of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta is a calendar of 1494 letters
(about forty are pre-1800) from Roxburgh, WalUch, Hardwicke, Hodgson, Blyth and others, the file
tieing marked Proceedings of the Society 1797-7840, We came across it accidentally during a fruitless
search for Day letters. At the time of our visit (13 December 1972) this large and valuable collection
of manuscripts could only be searched by random sampling of cupboards or shelves. We hope that its
treasures will one day be more accessible by provision of some kind of index.
132 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
of 1866, the present Indian Museum building on the Chowringhee was erected
(occupied in 1875, completed in 1877) and the collections formally handed over to
a Board of Trustees. John Anderson (1833-1900), previously Professor of Natural
Science at the Free Church College in Edinburgh, was appointed Curator from
September 1866 and in October 1869 he was joined b\' James Wood-Mason (1846-
1914) as Assistant Curator.
Before transferring the collections from the old Asiatic Society to the Trustees
of the new Indian Museum, the Council of the Society ordered that copies be made
of their catalogues. On 29 January 1869 John Anderson submitted the cata-
logues, which were then compared with the previous ones, and by August the
Council was ready to hand over the collections and catalogues (MSE. 57, MS.Proc.
Counc. Asiatic Soc, 7). It is not clear whether the two catalogues described below
were these copies ; they are dated 1873, but the}' may have been completed subse-
quent to the transfer.
The first is a catalogue of the Society's exhibited fishes compiled by Anderson,
being a leather-bound volume (33 x 19-7 cm), now in the Zoological Survey, Calcutta.
There is no title on the outside, but the first page is inscribed :
List of fishes exhibited in Cabinets comprising chiefly the Collection of fish
formed by Edward Blyth during his Curatorship of the Asiatic Sos' Museum.
April 1873 J. A. [John Anderson]
This catalogue contains entries numbered 1-1085 (the last four erased) and it
refers to 4190 specimens collected or donated by Blyth, Anderson, Wood-Mason,
Lt.-Col. Tytler, Major E. B. Sladen, Stohczka and many others. There are also
464 specimens collected by or on behalf of Day (277 registered numbers). There
is usually no indication of the way the Day specimens were acquired, but a few
are marked 'by exchange' (e.g. No. 218 Gobiiis masoni Day and No. 222 Eucteno-
gohius cristatus Day, both of these being incorporated on 21 November 1S72). A
specimen of Labeo isurus (No. 697) is marked 'Sent to Dr Day 21 Sept. 1875 to
be figured' ; it was subsequently returned and registered as Cirrhina reba. None
of the Day specimens is indicated as a tj'pe.
For some species these earUer Day specimens could be more important than
those of Day's major collection sent to Calcutta in 1876-79 since Day may well
have combined typical and non-typical material later on. The earUest specimen
dates from October 1866 and the latest from June 1873, but only 10 specimens are
dated. Possible Day types from this Catalogue/Register are indicated in our
Table (p. 154) by the prefix A (total 57 species).
John Anderson also prepared a second catalogue in which were listed the non-
exhibited fishes, being a cloth-bound volume also in the Zoological Survey of India,
where it is referred to as the 'Duphcate Catalogue' because its numbers (but not
contents) duplicate those of the 'Original Catalogue' described above. There is
no title on the outside, but the first page is inscribed :
This Volume contains those fish which have been entered in the Curator's
Report but whicli have not been exhibited in the general collection. Each
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 133
specimen is entered under a special number in the form of a circular tin label.
They were all entered at the dictation of the Curator and twice checked by
him, before they were placed in the present bottles in which they are stored.
15 January 1873 John Anderson
This catalogue contains entries numbered 1-440 and it refers to fishes collected
or donated by Captain Homphray, Reginald Warneford, Stoliczka, Wood-Mason
and R. Beavan. The bulk of the specimens, however, are those of Sladen and
Day, the latter mainly from Burma and the Andamans. The first entry is, in
fact, a Day specimen dated 1869, but dates are not otherwise given. There are
202 items from Day (but some species repeated), or 244 specimens if only one per
entry. Possible Day types in this Catalogue/Register are indicated in our Table
(p. 154) by the prefix B (total 6 species).
This duplicate collection is combined with the main collection of fishes at the
Zoological Survey. The specimens all bear round, numbered metal tags corre-
sponding to the catalogue numbers.
These two groups of Day fishes, totalhng about seven hundred specimens, are
overshadowed by his main collection, sold to Calcutta in 1876-79. The events
which led Day to part with his figured specimens, the cream of his collection, have
already been outUned (p. 52), and it has been suggested that Giinther was respon-
sible for not seizing the opportunity to acquire this collection for the British Museum.
Having failed to interest either the British Museum or the India Museum at South
Kensington, and perhaps regretting his decision to sell these specimens to Ford
in return for the additional plates for the Fishes of India (see p. 53) , Day now made
an approach to the new Indian Museum in Calcutta. Although the building had
not been completed by the time of Day's departure for England, he was obviously
impressed with the way the Museum was developing and confident that his specimens
would be properly cared for.
In late 1875 Wood-Mason was acting as Superintendent, Anderson presumably
being in England on leave after his participation in the disastrous second expedition
to Yunnan (Anon., 1914 : 113 and Ixiii). Day apparently made a proposition to
Anderson, probably in London in November or early December 1875, and at a
subsequent meeting of the Trustees of the Indian Museum on 12 January 1876 a
report from Anderson (11 December 1875) and statements by Day and by Ford
were read out. The Trustees recorded that 'Dr Anderson states that Dr Day's
collection of Indian fishes, comprising about 3,000 specimens is now on sale in
London, at an estimated cost of £380, and recommends the purchase to the Trustees'
(Selected extracts from the minutes of the Trustees, 8). The Finance Committee
approved the purchase and Anderson was asked to confirm the arrangement with
Day at once (loc. cit.). On 13 September 1876 a certified copy of the Agreement
was submitted, although Anderson had meanwhile been requested to complete the
purchase and to superintend its transport to India when he himself returned from
leave (in June 1876 -Anon., 1914 : Ixiii). In his Superintendent's Report Ander-
son recorded that the first consignment was of 'ten large stone jars, fully packed
with alcoholic specimens, each carefully wrapped up in cloth, and of two boxes
134 P- J- P WHITEHEAD AND P. K TALWAR
containing 292 prepared skins of fishes'. On 14 January 1878 the Trustees remitted
£95 in anticipation of the third portion of Day's collection (Selected extracts from
the minutes of the Trustees, 9) and on 11 August 1879 Anderson wTote to Day asking
him to confirm that the whole collection had now been sent (loc. cit., 10).
It is interesting to note that Day appears to have lowered his price from the
;f750 that he asked of the British Museum for what was implied to be the same
collection. Thus, for the British Museum it was 'my ist duplicate collection'
(see p. 53), while for the India Museum in South Kensington it numbered 'about
1,200 species' (Anon., 1876 : 334), or 4000 specimens (Minute Paper No. 910,
SCHC). Presumably this was the same as the 3167 specimens bought by Calcutta.
This major collection of Day's fishes was recorded in yet a third Catalogue/
Register, which is entitled on the cover 'Register of Presentations to Indian Museum'.
The entries relating to Day's fishes are numbered 1-3186 + 7151-7165, with various
gaps (see below) (total 2936 items). The first batch is dated 2 August to 5 December
1877 (Nos 1-414) ; the second batch is dated 30 August 1878 to 8 February 1879
(Xos 415-1112) ; and the third batch is dated 23 April to 14 November 1879 (^'os
1113-3186) ; the remaining 16 fishes (Nos 7151-7165) were registered later. For
each specimen (numbered with a rectangular tin label) the Catalogue gives number,
name, locality and a date/serial reference, while in a final column are 'Remarks'.
The latter state whether the fishes were those used for the illustrations for the
Fishes of India and sometimes there is a comment on their type status, e.g.
I. Trachypterus ovatus Figured, Plate 51a fig. i
215. Boleophthalmus dentatus Type
291-6. Diagramma grisium [sic] Type and 5 others Sind & Bombay PI. 21,
fig. 2 [against No. 293]
284-8. Nandus marmoratus Type and series of 4 more pi. 32 fig. i
These remarks seem to have been written by Anderson himself up to No. 2776,
but thereafter in another hand (probably by Wood-Mason). The indication 'type'
does not appear for everj' figured specimen and occasionally it is given for species
of HamUton-Buchanan or Cuvier and Valenciennes ; in some of these cases at
least, the specimens are the types of junior synonyms proposed by Day, showing
that he had left the type indication in the jar after having reidentified the specimen.
The status of the specimens in this Day collection is discussed below (p. 153).
On I July 1916, the Zoological Survey of India was inaugurated and the Zoo-
logical Section of the Indian Museum was assigned to it, although still housed
within the Museum. In December 1941, however, with the entry of Japan into
the war, it was decided to evacuate all type specimens and Class i exhibits to the
Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun. The rest of the collections were moved
to Kaiser Castle at Benares in May 1942 (Chopra, 1947), this being the temporary
headquarters of the Zoological Survey. Kaiser Castle lies on one bank of the
Varuna river, a tributary of the Ganges. In September 1943 the river flooded,
entering the compound of the Castle on the 26th and rising to about a metre above
plinth level the following day. In the cellars, where 42 racks contained bottles
of fishes, the water remained at ceiling height for two days and caused chaos.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 135
Labels were washed off or made illegible by silt, and bottles tilted, floated or sank.
The remaining 25 racks of fishes were less badly affected. Not only specimens, but
also books and letters were damaged, including registers. As luck would have it,
type specimens had just been brought from Dehra Dun and in some Sections were
being unpacked and arranged.
As far as fishes were concerned, most of the type specimens were saved, but the
total loss to the fish collection as a whole has been estimated at about 20 per cent.
This largely explains the missing Day material shown in parentheses in our Table
(P- 154).
The system of Catalogue/Registers in use in the Zoological Survey, and thus the
numbers used here for the Day specimens, is not straightforward and needs explana-
tion. In fact, there are four such Catalogues, two from the Asiatic Society and
two from the Indian Museum collections, as well as further Catalogues transcribed
from the originals. Since data from the Asiatic Society Catalogues were later
transferred to the Indian Museum Catalogues, but without comparable alteration
of the numbers accompanying the actual specimens, the same number can be
repeated and must be prefixed (by a letter) for the two earlier Catalogues.
No. I. Asiatic Society, exhibited series, completed April 1873
'Original Catalogue'
Numbered 1-1085 (last 4 erased) ; 4190 specimens, of which 464 were
Day's (59 Day species included)
Data transferred to Catalogues 3 and 4, becoming Nos 3206-7180 and
7181-7433 respectively (increase due to registration of specimens and not
just species ; also, Nos 7151-7165 'Purchased from Dr Day' about 1877
and thus not part of original Asiatic Society Catalogue)
Reg. Nos in our Table (p. 154) prefixed by A.
No. 2. Asiatic Society, non-e.xhibited series, completed 15 January 1873
'Duplicate Catalogue'
Numbered 1-440 ; no clear indication of number of specimens, but 202
species (some repeated) or 244 specimens if one per species, from Day
(6 Day species included)
Data transferred to Catalogue 4, becoming Nos 7434-7862 (total 428 items
since some omitted, although a few entered later)
Reg. Nos in our Table (p. 154) prefixed by B.
No. 3. Indian Museum, from 2 August 1877 to 14 November 1879
'Register of Presentations'
Numbered 1-3205 + 3206-7180 (the latter from Catalogue I except 7151-
7165, which were later Day specimens)
Contains bulk of Day specimens, i.e. those purchased in 1876-79, being
Nos 1-2785, 2787-3029 (with gaps at 2786, 2790, 2798, 2802-3, 2805,
2807-9, 2812, 2815 and 2817 - all purchased from Madras Museum) and
3031-3186 (with gaps at 3062-5, 3083-5. 3089-94, 3097-3104, 3109,
136 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
3111 and 3138-66 - all purchased from Madicis Museum except 3062,
3109 and 3111 which have no history) (total 3122 items)*
Reg. Nos in our Table (p. 154) not prefixed.
No. 4. Indian Museum (continuation of Catalogue 3)
'Register of Presentations'
Numbered 7181-7433 (from Catalogue 1)4-7434-7862 (from Catalogue 2)
+ 7863-14350 (subsequent registrations)
Contains the bulk of the Investigator collections ; also some further Day
material at Nos 7884, 8068-70, 8134-5, 8143, 8281-8302, 8591-8600,
8612-8863 (except 8811 and 8851), 8902-38, 9148, 9287, 9460-1, 9486-8,
9718-19, 9739, 10171, 10173, 10193-4, 13142 (type of Crayracion cochin-
ensis Day, formerly 7158 but re-registered) (total 143 items)
Reg. Nos in our Table (p. 154) not prefixed.
These four catalogues were damaged in the Varuna floods of 1943. The first
two were subsequently rewritten as a single catalogue ; a small label pasted inside
the original Duplicate Catalogue reads : This register has been copied out by me
(dated 31 October 1946 and signed by Mohsin Ali). Catalogues 3 and 4 (Register
of Presentations) were also damaged during the ^'aruna floods ; they were later
rewritten by Mohsin Ah and bear a similar label dated 31 October 1946.
f. Zoologisches Museum, Berlin, 1874-82
Over a period of fifteen years, from 1872 to 1887, Day kept in close touch with
the Berlin museum, most especiallj' when he was writing the Fishes of India and
the Ftslics of Great Britain. Its importance to him lay not only in its general
collections, but in the type material of Marcus EUeser Bloch (1723-99) and, perhaps
of equal value, in the considerable amount of help and advice that he received
from Wilhelm Peters (1815-83), its Director from 1857.
A natural history museum had existed in Berlin since 1770, although it was
not in fact the successor to the earlier KonigUche Kunst- und NaturaUenkammer
of the Prussian kings, which had accumulated 'rarities' since the time of Friedrich
Wilhelm, the Great Elector, in the seventeenth century.f With the founding of
the Humboldt University in 1810, the museum was given a departmental structure,
J. K. W. IlUger being the first Director of the new Zoological Museum. In 1969
the separate mineralogical, palaeontological and zoological museums, together
with one for ethnology, were once again united into a Museum fiir Naturkunde of
the Humboldt University (Daber, 1970). At the time of Day's visits to Berlin,
the Zoologisches Museum was in the main university building on the Unter den
Linden, not moving to its present site on InvaUdenstrasse until 1889.
• Nos 3187-3205 of this catalogue refer to 19 fish skins (2 species of Ptychobarbus, 4 species of Schizo-
thorax) collected on the Yarkand expedition of 1S73 (see Day, 1876a). Although not donated by Day
himself, the specimens were examined by him and representatives of four of Day's species are included
{P. laticeps, P. longiceps, S. niicrocephalus, S. irregularis - added to our Table, p. 154).
t In the earliest catalogue of the Great Elector's library, a manuscript of 1668 by Johannes Rawe
now in the Handscriftenabteilung of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, a number of natural history
specimens are included, some dating from the Brazilian studies of Piso and Marcgrave. Possibly some
of these early specimens found their way into the natural history museum, but there seems to have been
no wholesale transfer.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 137
Day's first letters to Berlin were written immediately before and after his quick
visit to England to get married in 1872 (Bombay, 6 March and 'en route to India',
5 May 1872, ZMB.MS.). They were addressed either to Eduard von Martens
(1831-1904), who had been a fellow student of Giinther's at Tubingen, or to Franz
Hilgendorf (1839-1904). There is then a gap of two years, but on Day's final
return to Europe in 1874 the correspondence was taken up again, this time with
Wilhelm Peters ; there are 47 letters from Day to Peters in the archives of the
Zoologisches Museum, from 27 September 1874 to 26 April 1882. Two final letters,
dated 20 and 27 December 1887, are addressed to von Martens.
For the most part, Day's letters to Peters concern the examination of types, the
announcement of visits, and the donation or exchange of specimens. Day's debt
to Peters was considerable, the latter being asked to examine numerous specimens
and often to give an opinion on their true identity. Quite early on Peters was
requested : 'Please look over the papers of Fishes of India as I send them for your
remarks' (3 April 1875, ZMB.MS.), and from the tone of the letters there is no
doubt that Day had great faith in Peter's judgement. In late January 1875 Day
paid his first visit to Berlin, returning for another visit in June that year ('thank
you' letters of 6 February and 26 June 1875, ZMB.MS.). He seems not to have
gone to Berlin the following year, visiting Paris instead ; he may have gone again
in 1877, probably went in October 1878, may have gone in 1879, but definitely went
at the end of May 1880 (letters of 2 January and 3 August 1876, I April 1878,
27 May 1880, ZMB.MS.).
The Day letters in Berlin show that he sent specimens to Peters on at least thir-
teen occasions between 1874 and 1880, and the Registers give a final fish collection
in 1882. In addition to fishes. Day also sent birds, mammals and reptiles, includ-
ing a large 'Crocodilus poniicerrianus' ( = Crocodylus porosus Schn.) which he pro-
mised in July 1875 but did not finally dispatch until three years later (Gallus
banksii - 14 October 1874 ; eagles - 26 June 1875 ; pair of Lammergens, packed
up by the Governess - 2 January 1876 ; the crocodile - c. 13 April 1878 ; small
mammals - 14 February 1880; ZMB.MS.). Day also forwarded to Peters some
of Walter ElUot's mammals, together with the latter's drawings, notes and a
borrowed copy of his paper (3 April 1875, ZMB.MS.).
From the Catalogue, it appears that Day sent a total of 295 fish species (or 331
specimens), of which 13 species (15 specimens) were European, the rest being
Indian. Of the Indian species, 27 were described by Day and 21 of these are
marked in the Catalogue with an asterisk (? by Peters). Day occasionally referred
to the status of the specimens that he sent. Thus, the 61 carps dispatched in the
summer of 1880, of which 8 are Day species, were definitely stated to be 'from
my duplicate collection' (5 July 1880, ZMB.MS.). This is perhaps not unexpected
since Day had by this time already disposed of his first collection to Calcutta. On
the other hand, he had earlier written that 'I have some types of my Indian species
ready for you . . .' (22 August 1875) and had already sent a specimen of Serranus
stoliczkae, a name which he stated was 'not yet published' (3 April 1875, ZMB.MS.).
However, the only clear indication of a type is Day's statement 'I also put in a
type of my Macrones chryseus' (18 December 1876, ZMB.MS.). There is also a
138 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
hint of type status in the indication 'Sciaena glauca sp. nov.' given in another list
of specimens (2 December 1S75, ZMB.MS.). On the whole, the paucity of Day
species in Berlin (only 27 out of the three hundred or so he had by then described),
coupled with hints in his letters, give the impression that Day was by now aware
of the importance of keeping his types in a single collection, possibly as a result
of his experience as a worker in museums and not just in the field.
Day's 47 letters to Peters, although usually brief and mainly concerned with
taxonomic matters, are nevertheless an important source of biographical informa-
tion, being in fact the largest single set of letters available to us (apart from the
curt requests to Giinther to examine British Museum material). They provide
useful data on his visits abroad, on his move to Cheltenham, on his state of health,
on the progress and dating of his books and, of perennial interest, on Giinther's
temper. Peters appears as an ever-wilUng colleague, prompt in his replies and as
ready to count finrays and scales in a Bloch specimen as to supply a testimonial
for the fisheries post that Day so coveted but never got (see p. 57). Day was
fully aware of the demands that he made on Peters' time and on one occasion
he stated frankly that 'I thought it best to dispatch a few [specimens] especially
as I want something from you' (28 November 1875, ZMB.MS.). Considering the
size of Day's collection, and the apparent warmth of his relationship with Peters,
it is perhaps a little surprising that Berlin received under three hundred species
of fishes whereas over eight hundred species went to Vienna, where Day's relation-
ship with Steindachner seems hardly to have been so close (see below). However,
the Vienna fishes were received in 1886-87, three years after Peters' death and
they might perhaps otherwise have been destined for Berhn. There is also the
fact that von Martens, who succeeded Peters as Director, was a close friend of
Giinther and may have sided with Giinther during the various disputes, possibly
to Day's knowledge.
The Berlin collection is a small one and the 27 possible t^-pes of Day species
should be in\-estigated with care.
g. Rijksmnseum van Natuurlijke Historic, Leiden, 1875-80 (also Pieter Bleaker,
1865-77)
Day seems to have had a close relationship with Leiden, perhaps closer even
than with Berlin. In a letter to Herman Schlegel (1804-84), then Director of
the Museum, Day said that : 'During the last five years [i.e. since his return to
England in 1874] I have not failed to visit your collection once or twice every
season, and each time I go to Leiden I feel more and more pleased, not only with
the great care taken with the specimens, but also with the facihties so courteously
afforded to all biological students.' (r8 February 1879, RMNH.MS.) Unfortu-
nately, this appears to be the only extant letter from Da\' to Schlegel. There are
also two letters from Day to Ambrosius Hubrecht, Curator of the fishes at Leiden,
written in the same year (see below). At the time of Day's visits, the Museum
was still on the very charming Rapenburg (see account in Gijzen, 1938), not moving
to its present site on Raamsteeg until this century.
I'RANCIS UAV (1829-1889)
Only in the Schlegel letter is there any reference to specimens sent to Leiden,
Day speaking of 'the several hundred species which I have been able to spare you
from my own collection made within the limits of British India' (RMNH.MS.).
However, an old notebook headed Visschcn verkregen door Riiil, aankop of Schcnkhig
(Fishes acquired b}^ exchange, purchase or gift), dated i June 1875-March 1886,
and serially numbered 1-221, shows that Day sent 11 batches of specimens to
Leiden, containing over five hundred fishes, between October 1875 and December
1879, ^t least 7 of these batches being exchanges, possibly all. The largest of these
was a collection of 'about two hundred fishes' from Indian freshwaters, sent (or
received) on 18 December 1877. In only 2 of the batches (May 1877 and 9 May
1878) are types indicated, making a total of 18, all except 2 being cj'prinids :
Chatoessus modestus Moulmein
Cliipea variegata Bassein
Barbus dubiiis Borraneh
Barbus carnaticus Canara
Barbus jcrdoni Mangalore
Barbns lithopidos Canara
Barbus neilli Deccan
Barbus parrah Malabar
Barbus pinnauratus Canara
Barbus punctatus Cochin
Barbus thomasi Canara
Barbus wynaadensis Wynaad
Danio nigrofasciatus Burma
Labeo nigresccns Malabar
Labco nigripinnis Sind
Labeo sindensis Sind
Scaphiodovi brevidorsalis Borraneh
Scaphiodon watsoni Sind
There is also in Leiden a list of Day material entitled Visschen van F. Day uit
Magazin en Gallerij gerschonken in 18J8-1882, to which have been added iSy^, y6,
■jj, 80. This seems to have been drawn up in 1882 and to have been compiled
from an old Register entitled Visschen, Lyst van Spiritus exemplaren, serially num-
bered from 1-9629. This list of Daj' fishes comprises 11 pages and gives 418
specimens or 412 species (but some listed twice). The first 271 names are preceded
by the volume and page numbers from Giinther's Catalogue, followed by the page
and plate number in Day's Fishes of India, as well as the registered number and
length of the fish in mm ; the remaining 147 items are given a registered number,
name, date (1875 to 1880) and localitj'. There is no indication of types, but 52
are shown as Day species in the first part of the list (2 in fact are Jerdon species)
and a total of 71 Day species are actually represented in the entire list. The total
number of specimens (418) is less than that given in total for the 11 batches in the
notebook mentioned above (361 plus about two hundred freshwater fishes from
India).
In two of his letters to Bleeker (see below). Day spoke of material sent to the
Leiden museum. On the first occasion he was busy with the flatfishes for the
Fishes of India and he said that he would be 'sending some specimens in a few
days to the Leyden Museum', including Synaptura commersoniana, S. albomaculata
and 'several species of Cynoglossus as Bengalensis, oligolcpis, puncticeps, brachy-
rhynchus, macrolepidotus, arel ?, dispar ? new, and lingua from Calcutta which =
polous I think' (i December 1876, RMNH.MS.). He also sent at this time Tricho-
gaster fasciata and Ophiocephalus niarulius, but the latter was perhaps for Bleeker
and not for the Museum since he asked Bleeker to compare it with 0. maruloides
I40 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAK
(i December 1876, RMNH.MS). In another letter to Blocker Day mentioned that lie
had sent a specimen of Pleuronedes zebra to Leiden and he also spoke of an enclosed
list of fishes sent to Leiden (8 January 1877, RMNH.MS., but list not extant).
Yet another document in Leiden is a small notebook entitled Visschen gegeven
in Ruil (Fishes given in exchange), apparently begun on i June 1875 and thus the
counterpart of the notebook Visschen verkregen . . . mentioned above. The first
325 items are serially numbered, of which the first (only) was to Day, the remainder
being unnumbered. These records show that in return for his donations. Day
received from the Museum at least 9 batches of fishes, totalling 314 specimens,
sent to him between September 1875 and June 1879 and often showing a fairly
close one-to-one exchange basis. Many of these were specimens from the Indo-
Australian Archipelago and would thus be those collected by Bleeker and sent to
Leiden prior to the main purchase of Bleeker fishes (the A series, i.e. the types)
at the Bleeker auction of December 1879. In his two letters to Hubrecht of June
and July 1879, Day Usted 22 species and 25 species which 'I brought from Leyden,
the remainder (verj^ few) next time' or 'had from you' (29 June and 6 July 1879,
RMNH.MS.). It is not clear from this whether Hubrecht merely wanted to keep
his records straight, or whether he was asking for the return of these specimens.
The notebook shows that some 65 species (or specimens) were 'aan Day meegeven'
on 9 May 1879, and these are evidently the species listed by Day to Hubrecht as
'brought from Leyden'. Possibly Day took them in a hurry and promised to
list them on his arrival.
In addition to the specimens exchanged with the Leiden museum. Day appears
to have given and exchanged a certain amount of material with Pieter Bleeker,
then living at The Hague. From the acknowledgements made to Bleeker in both
the Fishes of Malabar and the Fishes of India, as well as Day's frequent visits to
the Netherlands, there is a strong impression that Day's relationship with Bleeker
resembled that with Peters in Berlin ; no doubt their very similar backgrounds
contributed to this (see p. 5).
Day's gifts to Bleeker are poorly documented, but some indications occur in
the 13 extant letters written to Bleeker between 1865 and 1877. In the first letter,
undated but from the context probably May 1865, Day said that he had sent two
new species of Labeo and that he was expecting 'more specimens of other species
from India and shall do myself the honour of forwarding some for your acceptance'
(undated, RMNH.MS.). In letters of 5 July and 13 August of the same year he
again promised specimens. 'Should you be desirous of obtaining any further
specimens of fish from India', he wrote, 'it would afford me great pleasure to send
you (if I can procure them) what you require from that country.' (13 August
1865, RMNH.MS.) In 6 of the thirteen letters the following specimens are named
as having been sent to Bleeker, 7 of them being species described by Day ; of the
latter, those sent in 1865 are the most Ukely to be types.
? May 1865 *Laheo [melanampyx fide letter ]irobably of June]
*Labeo [denisonii - as above]
• Species described by Day.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 141
5 July 1865 Caranx kurra
* Brachygramma [probably B. jerdonii]
*Perilampus [probably P. aurolineains]
Catopra malaharica
*Pseiidohagrus chryseus [implied from previous letter]
8 August 1875 Andamia expansa Andamans, coll. Day
I December 1876 *Bregmaceros atripinnis
Gagata typus
Pimelodus cenia
Pseudecheneis sukaius DarjeeUng
Glypiosternum striatum Himalayas
Amblyceps mangois Himalayas
Trichogaster fasciata
Ophiocephalus marulms [or to Leiden museum]
8 Januarj' 1877 *Glyphidodon sindensis
Glyphidodon anabantoides [regrets that his G. cochinensis
and G. notatus, as well as Pomacentrus jerdoni 'have gone
back to Calcutta']
14 July 1877 Hemirhamp/ms limbatus
Hemirhamphus indet.
These specimens would have formed part of Bleeker's collection and would thus
have been amongst the material auctioned at his death. In Group VI of Bleeker's
Auction Catalogue (Hubrecht, 1879 : 27), species No. 57 Trichogaster fasciatus is
represented by a single specimen, surely that given by Day. Similarly, No. 83
Pristolepis malabaricus is a single specimen and thus the one sent as Catopra mala-
harica during the controversy with Giinther (see below). The single Pseudobagrus
chryseus, No. 94 in Group IX of the Auction Catalogue, must be the specimen sent
by Day in 1865, while in Group XI, Nos iii and 115 are evidently Day's specimens
of Labeo melanampyx and L. denisonii. However, the final two Day species men-
tioned in the letters, Bregmaceros atripinnis and Glyphidodon sindensis, do not
appear in the Auction Catalogue, although there is a single Bleeker specimen of the
latter (RMNH.6476).
At least some of the material sent to Bleeker must have been in exchange.
Evidence of this is seen in the number of Bleeker specimens included in the list
of fishes shown at the International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883 and catalogued
by Day (Day, 1883). These Bleeker fishes appear again in the list of material
purchased by the Australian Museum (Anon., 1885, 1886), from which Whitley
(1958) named 56 Bleeker types. However, it is now well established that the true
Bleeker types were either amongst the A series of the Auction Catalogue (bought
by Leiden) or else amongst seven of the nine lots (1786 species) bought by the
British Museum between 1858 and 1880 (all but the first and last lots from Bleeker's
personal collection - see Whitehead et al., 1966). Day himself seems to have
accepted certain of his Bleeker specimens as types, stating in the Fishes of India
* Species described by Day.
142 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
(Preface : vii) that Bleeker 'presented me with many of his types'. The Austrahan
Museum e\'idently took Daj^'s word for it, as in good faith did Whitley.
Other Bleeker specimens in Day's possession could have been included in any
of the sales or donations made by Day after 1875 (India Museum, Calcutta, Berlin,
? Leiden, Florence, Menna or the British Museum), but they are unlikely to have
much importance. Some Bleeker specimens are indicated in the 'Register of
Presentations' at the Zoological Survey in Calcutta (e.g. No. 376 Gerres oyena.
No. 378 Gerres poeti), but these are given as 'from Bleeker', without reference to Day.
As \\ith Peters, Day often sought Bleeker's advice. The first instance is in
1865 when he wTOte : 'The late Sir John Richardson asked me to send to you
the Catopra Malabarica for your opinion as to whether it is a badis or a Catopra.'
(Undated, ? June 1865, RMNH.MS.) In July, Day sent a reminder, in the margin
of which Bleeker wrote 'Nandus' (5 July 1875, RMNH.MS.). Thanking Bleeker,
Day stated that he had 're-examined the Catopra Malabarica (Giinther) and also
made a skeleton of one specimen' (13 August 1865, RMNH.MS.). One can well
understand Day's sense of injustice at Giinther's sneer 'as if he had ever seen a
skeleton of Catopra !' {Zoological Record, 1866 : 141). Bleeker too was unfairly
castigated in this same outburst (see above, p. 30) and it may be significant that
in 1867 the hitherto fairly regular sale by Bleeker of type specimens to the British
Museum ceased abruptly and that in this final batch the types were those of junior
synonyms only (Whitehead et al., 1966 : 10-12).
In March 1877 Bleeker negotiated with Schlegel for the disposal of his collection
to the Leiden museum, but it was clear that no single institution could afford to buy
it all. Hubrecht also conferred with Bleeker but it is not known to what extent
the subsequent splitting of the collection was Hubrecht 's idea. Day wrote to
Schlegel urging that 'it would be a well deserved tribute to the memory of one of
Holland's most zealous naturalists were the late Dr Bleeker's collections to find
a resting place in the Leyden Museum' (18 February 1879, RMNH.MS.), and he
told Hubrecht that he was 'glad Mrs Bleeker has had the good sense to place the
division in your hands' (c. 6 July 1879, RMNH.MS.). Day himself had gone over
to The Hague, having been asked to 'give an opinion on the value of poor Dr
Bleeker's collections' (Day to Peters, 6 April 1S78, ZMB.MS.), and it seems that
he could not resist taking a few specimens for himself ; on his return he told Peters
that he had 'obtained some of Bleeker's types from Hubrecht' (18 May 1878,
ZMB.MS.).
h. Museum National d'Histoire Natnrelle, Paris, i8js
In Day's time, the Paris Museum was the most celebrated of all for its contribu-
tions to ichthyology through the works of Lacepede, Cuvier and Valenciennes.
Not only was there the incentive for Day to examine their numerous types, but
there were also fairly substantial collections of Indian fishes made by Dussumier,
Leschenault and others. Day's letters imply that he visited once or even twice
in 1875 (see above, p. 51) and he must surely have included Paris on his itinerary
in subsequent years. Nevertheless, he made no mention of having sent specimens
to Paris in his final letter to Giinther (11 January 1889, BMNH.MS.G. 15). There
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889)
143
is, however, a single letter in the Paris Museum archives, from Day to Leon Vaillant,
in which he promised 'putting together some fishes for your splendid Museum but
do not expect to send over any before June when I also hope to go with them
to Paris' (i March 1875, MNHN.MS.). The Museum register shows that Day
presented at this time 26 + 22 specimens, of which 4 + 7 are possible types (respec-
tively 5 June 1875 and 25 July 1876 in the Catalogue, the acquisition numbers being
287-311 and 428-448 bis).
i. Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale, Florence, 1880-84
'At Florence, under the direction of Professor Giglioli, is one of the best arranged
museums in Europe - the collections are in first-class order, and clearly and well
exhibited." Thus wrote Edward Ramsay (1885 : 31) after his tour of museums
following the Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883. Day seems to have shared
this opinion and he donated a number of fishes to Florence. It is not clear if he
ever visited the Museum himself, but when Enrico Giglioli (1845-1909) attended
the 1882 Fisheries Exhibition in Edinburgh, he travelled back and stayed with
Day at Cheltenham afterwards (Day to Bleeker, 26 April 1882, RMNH.MS.).
They must have met again the next year when Giglioli was a delegate at the London
Exhibition.
The Registers in Florence show that Day first presented a specimen in August
1880. Altogether, he made four donations, totalUng 171 Indo-Pacific (mostly
Indian) species (333 specimens) as well as 10 British species.
4 August 1880
24 May 1881
24 December 1883
No. 1276. Scopelus N. Atlantic
No. 1481. 41 Indian species (45 specimens), 'tutti in alcool
e in ottima condizione', all named. Of these, the following
are Day species :
Psenes indicus Madras (originally Cubiceps)
Cocotropus roseus Madras
Pomacentrus sindensis Sind (originally Glyphidodon)
No. 1976. 27 Indian species (27 specimens), Bombay, Sind,
Madras, mostly large and preserved dry. No hst of species.
Also, 57 Indian species (c. 212 specimens), Bombay, Sind,
Madras, in alcohol. No list of species. Both lots were
given by the Government of India through Day and were
thus part of the 1883 Exhibition material.
5 November 1S84 No. 2163. 9 British species (9 specimens), all named. Also,
46 Indian species (49 specimens), all named and with local-
ities. Three species are indicated as types, and two more
are Day species :
Scaphiodon microphthalma Day (tipo !) Quetta
Scaphiodon irregularis Day (tipo !) Afganistan
Danio neilgherriensis Day (tipo !) Ootacamund
Semiplotus mcclellandi Assam
Bregmaceros atripinnis Bombay
144 I'- J- P- WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
Although the specimens recorded as donation No. 1976 of 24 December 1883 are
not listed, it has been possible to retrieve the names of many of them from index
cards to the main collection. Of those that can be recognized for certainty, there
are 105 species (169 specimens in alcohol and 19 dry), of which 3 are possible types
(labelled Barbodes thomassi, Barilius evezardi and Mugil olivaceus). A further 48
species are perhaps from this same batch (69 specimens, all in alcohol), including
6 possible tj'pes (labelled as Acentrogobius neilli, A. melanostida, A. griseus,
Etictenogobius striatus, Boleophthalmns tenuis and Salarias steindachneri).
Although in number of Day specimens rivaUing BerUn, the Florence collection
is not an important one and all but one of the Day species are found in other collec-
tions also. It is not clear why Da\' (or Giglioli) indicated only three as types. It
should be noted that Bregmaccros atripinnis and Semiplotus mcclellandi are not
from their type localities (Burma and Moulmein).
j. Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, Genoa, 1880
Another smaU collection of Day's fishes is in the Genoa museum. Altogether
there are only 21 species (one specimen of each), of which none is a Day species.
They seem to have been sent at the request of Decio \'inciguerra, who at that time
was associated with the Museum and worked on its collections, although he did
not become an official member of staff until forty years later (Vice-Director in 1921).
There are no Day letters at Genoa but, according to a file of manuscripts left bj'
Vinciguerra, the Daj' specimens were received in 1880. In the Cheltenham material
(Q 655) there is a single letter from \'incigucrTa dated 5 January 1881 and begin-
ning 'Je vous suis toujours tres reconnaissant des poissons que vous m'avez envoye
et j 'attends les autres que vous me promettez'. This suggests that Day sent further
batches after 1880, but there is no record of this in the Registers.
A note in the card-file shows that three specimens of Amblypharyngodon mola
from Burma (No. 17267) were sent to Day for identification and were later returned.
This was presumably- while Vinciguerra was working on the Burma fishes collected
by Leonardo Fea (Vinciguerra, i^
k. Australian Museum, Sydney, 1883
The events which seem to have persuaded Day to sell his second-best collection
to the Australian Museum in S\-dney have been mentioned already (p. 82). Wliether
the decision of Jury 26 at the International Fisheries Exhibition really influenced
Day's decision will probably never be known, but certainly it presented an ideal
opportunity for the New South Wales representative, Edward Pierson Ramsay
(1842-1917). Described by a contemporary as 'a man of most genial manners,
kindness of heart, and possessing a rich vein of humour' (Ethcridge, 1917 : 217),
Ramsay had already done much to enlarge the Australian Museum's collections,
particularly in bird skins ; the acquisition of the Day fishes was something of a
triumph.
However, lea\dng aside Day's quarrel with Giinther and Ramsay's genial nature,
the choice of Sydney for Day's second collection is perhaps surprising. The Indian
Museum, although small and only recently estabhshed, was at least concerned with
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 145
Indian fishes, while the major European museums surely deserved more than just
the seven or eight hundred specimens hitherto dispersed in small batches (Berlin,
Leiden, Florence and Genoa). Possibly, none of the larger museums was prepared
to pay, having by now lost the chance to acquire Day's No. I collection, whereas
the Australian Museum Trustees were evidently keen to back Ramsay's efforts.
The Museum itself was by now fairly well established. In 1827, Wilham Holmes
had arrived in Sydney with a commission to collect and arrange zoological specimens
for a proposed colonial museum, and with the help of the Rev. Charles Wilton a
museum came into existence in Sydney and from 1836 was known by its modern
name (Whitley, 1961 ; Etheridge, 1916). By 1849 the Museum was settled on
its present site, on the corner of Wilham and College Streets in the heart of Sydney,
and in the i86o's the Main Building was constructed (Anderson, 1934).
Ramsay, who had been a Curator at the Australian Museum since 1874, was
nominated Secretary in Charge of the Exhibits for the New South Wales Court at
the 1883 International Fisheries Exhibition at South Kensington, where he col-
lected for the Museum no less than si.K gold medals, five silver and one bronze, as
well as a gold for himself. What he saw exhibited in the Indian Court, in addition
to native fishing gear and collections sent from the three Indian Presidencies, was
Day's personal collection comprising 809 freshwater and marine fishes. These
were listed by Day (1883) in a Catalogue of the Exhibits, with the locaUty of each
stated, as well as an indication of the type status in the case of Bleeker and Blyth
specimens (but not for his own specimens). The AustraUan Museum purchased
this Day collection for £200 and in its Report for 1884 (Anon., 1885 : 42-46) it
acknowledged the acquisition of :
Dr Day's private collection, as exhibited at the International Fisheries Exhibi-
tion, London, 1883. Specimens of fish from India and the Indian Ocean pur-
chased from Deputy Surgeon-General Francis Day, F.L.S., F.Z.S., including
dupHcates of his type species and co-types from Dr Bleeker's collection. 'Co-
type' signifies that the specimens were admitted by Dr Bleeker as identical
with his types. 'Type', that these are certified to by Dr Day being part of
his original collection, and named by him.
The species are then listed, with author and locality ; those that were considered
types are set in capitals (with a few errors), the type status being given in paren-
theses. Altogether, 791 species are listed, of which 173 are shown as types, those
of Day being 97, the remainder Bleeker and Blyth. In their Report for 1885 (Anon.,
1886 : i), the Trustees of the Museum recorded 'about 2,000 Indian Fishes from Dr
Day' and on p. 5 the contents of a further two cases are Usted, being 54 and 72
species, of which 3 and 14 were types, or i and 6 types of Day species. Thus, the
grand total was 917 species (192 types, of which 104 were those of Day species.)
Presumably, many of the species were represented by more than one specimen,
thus doubling the total to the two thousand claimed. The collection was regis-
tered by James Ogilby in 1885.
Whitley (1958) continued the tradition of recognizing types amongst the Day
and Bleeker specimens, for which he hsted 121 for Day and 56 for Bleeker. The
146 P. J. V WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
justification for the extra 17 Day types was presumably that these represented Day
species, the lack of such indication in the Report being merely an error. In our
Table (p. 154) we have included 102 of those given by Whitley. The status of the
Bleeker 'types' has been discussed above (p. 141), but it should be emphasized that
even the Report does not claim for them the criteria that we now insist upon.
Similarly, the Day 'types' are admitted to have been duplicates from 'his original
collection', by which must be understood the collection that he sent back to Europe
in 1872, with all the numerous additions made to species collected and described
from 1865.
The status of the Blyth 'types' can only be determined by comparison with Blyth
material in Calcutta.
1. Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1886-87
Day certainly met Franz Steindachner (1834- 1919) in 1883 at the International
Fisheries E.xhibition in London, where Steindachner served on Jury No. 23, together
with Giglioli, Ramsay and others. We have no record, however, of any visits b}'
Day to ^'ienna. At this time the present museum building had not yet been
formally opened (10 August 1S89), although in 1886 the fish and reptUe specimens
were moved across from their seven small and dark rooms in the Imperial Cabinet
on Josefsplatz (SchoUer, 1958 : 38-39, also pi. 6 showing the former building - on
fire in 1848). In 1887 Steindachner was appointed Director of the zoological
collections, with a suite of rooms which nowadays houses the fish collections (Kahs-
bauer, 1959 -hfe and work of Steindachner).
Only four letters from Day to Steindachner can be found in the Museum archives,
written in 1877 and 1886. The last of these letters is undated, but since it men-
tions a pilchard x herring hybrid 'lately obtained' this must be shortly after the
discovery of the first such specimen in September 1885 and perhaps before the
finding of a second specimen in December of that year (Day, 1886) ; since Stein-
dachner is mentioned in the paper, which was received by the Zoological Society
on I February 1886, this must be the latest date for the letter. On the subject
of specimens, Day wrote,
Thanks for your letter. I think nothing would be more in the interest of
Ichthyology than my depositing the rest of my Indian collection of fish, and
subsequently my British collection, including hybrids, in your Museum where
they would be so well cared for, and have the superintendence of yourself,
provided such could be arranged.
I have no Selache maxima worth sencUng, my example was so badly skinned
that it is in the stable ; while in this country skins of fish do not improve by
keeping. My type of Carcharias Ellioti is 11 feet long and is C. gueniheri of
Murray recenth' described as new.
As my skins of fish include Jerdon's collection, thej- occupy much space,
and ought to be in some public institution.
(? November 1886, NMV.MS.)
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 147
In the Annual Report of the Museum for 1886 acknowledgement is made of the
presentation by Day of 1000 specimens (815 species), including some of Day's
types and also 'types' which Day had received from Bleeker. It is not clear, how-
ever, whether the letter cited above refers to these specimens, or whether 'the
rest of my Indian collection' meant the five thousand or so specimens that Day
gave to the British Museum two years later ; certainly, the latter included Jerdon
fish skins (see p. 150).
The list of Day specimens kindly prepared for us by Dr Paul Kahsbauer contains
only 45S species (607 specimens). Of these, 74 are species described by Day (100
specimens) and these have been entered in our Table (p. 154). Among the speci-
mens are 60 which have East Indian locaUties and were presumably those given
to Day by Bleeker, amongst which are a number of Bleeker species, thus being
the 'types' mentioned in the Annual Report. The discrepancy between what
Steindachner claimed and what can now be found (a difference of about four
hundred specimens or 357 species) is rather large. Steindachner may have exag-
gerated a little, but there must surely have been more material at one time.
Steindachner apparently received some fish skins from Day, including those
from Jerdon's collection, but Dr Kahsbauer was not able to list any ; the collec-
tion of dry specimens in Vienna, however, presents quite formidable curatorial
problems The type of Carcharias ellioti has not been located in any other collec-
tion, but Day may have had to throw it away.
Day's first letter to Steindachner, written early in 1877, asks Steindachner's help
in identifying fishes from 'our mutual friend Stoliczka's Yarkand Collection', for
which Day sent five of his plates and promised proofs of the text of his Report
(Day, 1878) (9 January 1877, NMV.MS.). Day suspected that Steindachner's
Nemacheilus stoliczkae and A', temnicauda were the same species ; he also sent plate
127 from the Fishes of India, asking if figure 4 was Labeo stoliczkae (now on pi.
135. %■ I. thus plates probably renumbered as a result of additions after this
date). Finally, Day asked for two large heads of Silurus glanis, for which he
offered some Indian silurid specimens in exchange.
In his second letter. Day thanked Steindachner for agreeing to send the Silurus
glanis and in exchange he spoke of 'about 30 species of Siluridae & Cyprinidae
ready for you amongst which are Semiplotus McClellayidi, Labeo fimbriaius Bloch,
L. kontiiis Jerdon, Cirrhina bata H.B. Labeo boggart, Sykes, L. pangnoia H.B.
L. boga H.B.' (15 July 1877, NMV.MS.). Of these, 5. mcclellandi is a Day species,
for which Day had given a new name, S. stoliczkanns, six years earlier (labeDed as
mcclellandi in the Vienna collections, NMV. 54640).
Day's third letter to Steindachner (5 August 1877, NMV.MS.) thanks the latter
for the specimens of Siluris glanis and includes a list of 22 species (23 specimens)
just dispatched, of which Apogon ellioti, Cocotropus rosens, Labeo nigripinnis
and Scaphiodon ipatsoni were Day species, but without indication of type status.
These two collections add about fifty species to the total cited earlier for the
1886 collection, thus making Vienna the largest European collection of Day
fishes to that date. It was only exceeded by the final collection to the British
Museum.
148 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
m. British Museum {Natural History), i888-8g
Concerning Day's final donation to the British Museum - the 'left-overs' one
might say, albeit over five thousand of them - there is something of a mystery, for
within the space of about a month Day seems to have made a complete volte-face.
For eighteen years his specimens had gone to foreign institutions. ImpUcitly, or
at times very explicitly, this distribution of specimens hinged on his quarrel with
Giinther. Yet at the close of 1888 Day appears suddenly to have relented and
to have placed the remainder of his vast collection in Giinther's hands.
As shown earlier, Giinther's attacks in the i86g and later issues of the Zoological
Record probably provoked the scribbled comment 'No more fish to be sent to the
BM. FD.' (Q 602). However, by 1875 and with the financing of the plates of
the Fishes of India at stake, Day was apparently prepared to sell his No. i collec-
tion to the British Museum, although Owen's (? Giinther's) disinterest probably
then reinforced his determination to send his collections elsewhere. Henceforth,
Day's fishes went to Harvard and Calcutta, to Berlin and Leiden, to Florence,
Vienna and Sydney. More than half his collection, over six thousand fishes,
including the figured specimens and many if not most of his types, went to other
institutions, and if the Trustees of the British Museum were unaware of this loss
to the national collection, it cannot have escaped Giinther's notice.
So strongly did Day feel that even in November 1888 he was adamant that his
bird specimens should not go to the British Museum. In a letter to Alfred Newton
at Cambridge he said that, having been laid up for the past seven months and seeing
no improvement, he felt it advisable to look for a home for his collection of Indian
birds. He continued,
I am deterred from giving them to the British Museum consequent on the
numerous insults I have received there and from there and I will not send
them to Florence before I know if they will be prized in this countrv.
(18 November 1888, ZMC.MS.)
The birds were accepted by Cambridge and were dispatched, but only a few
weeks later Day apparently swallowed his pride. It would be of great interest
to know how he made the initial offer and to whom it was addressed, whether to
Giinther himself or whether to WUham Flower (1831-99), now the Director of the
British Museum (Natural History).*
The first intimation that we have found to the donation of Day's fishes to the
British Museum is in Giinther's last letter to Day, written on 10 January 1889
(BMNH.MS.G. 15), in which he says that 'the conveyance of your specimens was
effected without mishap ; I myself will undertake the selection of specimens ;
in fact I have commenced this work today'. This would appear to have been
Giinther's first acknowledgement of receipt of the collection, which suggests that
it may only have arrived early in the new year. A fortnight later, Giinther
• At a Committee meeting on 24 July 1880, Edward Bond, the Principal Librarian, endorsed an order
that "the designation of the Museum ... be expressed in writing thus: British Museum {Natural History')
(BMNH.MS. Doc. 1:41). Even after the move to South Kensington, Richard Owen had been known
as Superintendent of tlie Natural History Departments; Flower succeeded him in 1884 and was the
first to be termed Director.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 149
officially reported Day's presentation of 'a very large and valuable collection of
Indian and British Fishes and Crustaceans' of which 'The Indian series comprises
about 1500 specimens . . .' (23 January 1889, BMNH.MS.Doc. 11 : 13). He added,
Dr Giinther begs leave to recommend to the Trustees that they should order
a special letter of thanks to be written to Mr Day for his valuable donation.
The official acknowledgement was probably a letter written to Day by Flower,
to which Day replied apologizing for not answering sooner (18 February 1889,
BMNH.MS.Z.). In this letter Day referred to yet another of his collections, saying
that his fish 'at the Science and Art Dept. SJ\. are in the Buckland Museum' ;
presumably these were British fishes illustrating Buckland's former fish culture
and fisheries exhibits. In the same letter Day enquired about the Madras Museum
specimens sent in error to the British Museum (see above, p. 130). Answering
Flower's reply to this letter, Day thanked him for finding the missing Gohius thiirstoni
type and expressed himself 'most obliged for being informed of the number of
specimens Mr Boulenger has labelled, many I fear are not in a good state' (7 March
1889, BMNH.MS.Z.). He had earlier emphasized the poor condition of some of
the fishes in his letter to Giinther, pointing out that 'Many fish are bad as every jar
was taken and some I have not seen for 18 months. . . . Some have the wrong
names of species on them but the right name of the locality from whence they came.
The original species having been removed.' (11 January i88g, BMNH.MS.G. 15.)
According to Gunther's letter of 10 January, 'Gerrard of course has communicated
to me all the information you have given him', which suggests that there were hsts
or instructions sent with the boxes of specimens.
Day had apparently had his shelves cleared and since the best had long since
gone, there must have been much that was of little interest to the Museum. Giinther
pointed this out and offered to dispose of material to other museums (Edinburgh
was suggested), although he promised to preserve 'everything of historical or
intrinsic value' (10 January 1889, BMNH.MS.G. 15) ; Day readily agreed to any
such division (11 January 1889, loc. cit.). In the Accession Register at the end
of the Day donation there is a note stating : 'The number of duplicate specimens
of Indian Fishes made up into five sets, for exchange, is 1876.' Of these, 558 fishes
went to Leningrad and 462 to Chicago (see below).
The Day fishes did not all arrive at once. Those that were acknowledged on
23 January (about fifteen hundred Indian fishes plus some British) were perhaps
the first of several batches, of which one other is recorded (un.signed postcard
announcing dispatch of a box from Cheltenham, 10 April 1889, BMNH.MS.Z.).
The bulk of the collection was registered together, ostensibly on i February 1889,
but this must have been the date registration started since there were 4849 fishes
(and 15 reptiles and 3 amphibians) and the task of Usting, labelling and bottUng
this would have taken some weeks.
A small batch (26 fishes, all Indian except a Bleeker clupeoid and 2 Rhodeiis)
was subsequently registered in August of that year. This batch is of interest
because it includes Apogon thurstoni and Acanthocliniis indicus, both of which are
indicated as types. The first, and possibly the second also, are Madras Museum
I50 P. J. P. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
specimens borrowed from Thurston and never returned (see above, p. 130). They
are also among the few Day types indicated as such in the Register (also indicated
are Schizothorax irregularis and Ptychoharhus longiceps in the February collection).
A final batch (10 fishes, all British) was registered in December 1892 ; possibly
these had been found when Kenilworth House was being packed up.
The Accession Register shows 4849 + 26 + 10 = 4885 Day fishes, of which 4398
were Indian (161 as skins) and 487 European, etc. Of the Indian fishes we have
found 115 of the 328 species described by Day. These have been added to our
Table of possible types (p. 154), but we have e.xcluded 24, being those already repre-
sented in Day's material acquired in 1865-70, or those whose locahty clearly differs
from that in the original description.
The 161 skins listed in the Accession Register (including the possible types of
31 Day species) were not incorporated into the general collections but for some
reason remained in their box (and appear to have been virtually ignored ever since).
In fact, there were four more boxes of Day's fish skins, but Gunther seems to have
given up at this point and they were never registered. They contain 981 specimens,
among which 25 Day species are included (these have now been registered, but not
the remainder) ; as with other specimens from this 1888-89 collection, we have
included possible types in our Table. These fish skins are of considerable interest
because they represent some of Day's earUest collections (1858-68) from Cochin,
Ootacamund, Kurnool and Madras. A few are loose, but most are sewn onto
cards, usually with a name (some renamed) and many with locahty and/or date
and occasionally some comment on colour or provenance ; for the cyprinids, the
pharyngeal teeth are often mounted beside the fish.
A few of these skins are labelled 'from Jerdon's Collection', thus bearing out
Day's claim to Steindachner that 'my skins of fish include Jerdon's collection'
(? November 1886, NMV.MS., see p. 146 above ; also, note in Eg. 11 -see p. 49).
Several specimens are marked 'From Sir W. ElUot' or 'Sir W. Elliot's Collec.
Madras'. One of these, an unregistered fish labelled Diagramma poicilopterutn, is
mounted in a box which bears the label 'Francis Day Esq. Hartland House
Kings Road', where Day was living at the time of his visit to Elliot in December
1874 (see p. no above). This specimen is also labelled 'Jerdon's specimen' and 'see
coloured figure', which seems to indicate that Elhot acquired some of Jerdon's
specimens and perhaps used them for his own illustrations ; alternatively, this
was a fish drawn by Jerdon. Yet another specimen, a flyingfish, is stated to have
been from Jonathan Couch's collection. Since Day apparently borrowed Couch's
manuscript Journals, transcribing them for a series in Land and Water (and keeping
two of them - Q 648), he may have had other Couch fishes.
In spite of their condition, these skins may well rank as high as Day's 1864-70
collections to the British Museum since many were among the original specimens
collected and may have been used in the description of species (this is even more
likely in the frequent cases where finray and scale counts are written on the cards).
Of biographical interest, it can be noted that 94 of the smaller cards are visiting
cards and thus show the people who called on the Day household at about the
time that the specimens were collected.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 151
There is no published catalogue of the fish types in the British Museum, but a
working list is kept (loose-leaf, arranged by generic number). With a collection
as old, complex and large as this, the type indications are often wrong and con-
versely, a number of genuine types have been missed. This has already been
demonstrated for the Bleekcr material (Whitehead et al., 1966) and the same is
true of the Day types. Obvious errors in the latter have now been set to rights,
but only revisionary work can truly establish the status of many.
n. Zoological Museuin, Leningrad, i8Sg
In i88g tliis Museum received 558 specimens (284 species) of Indian fishes culled
from Day's final collection given to the British Museum. In the Leningrad register
these are Hsted as Nos 8101-8384. All are named, with author, locality and number
of specimens. Included are representatives of 19 species described by Day and
these have been added to our Table (p. 154).
o. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, i8gg
Long after Day's final collection to the British Museum had been incorporated,
Boulenger wrote to the Field Museum in Chicago offering 452 Day specimens from
India (182 species), together with 53 other fishes from Karachi and the Persian
Gulf and 104 snakes and lizards from the East Indies ; he enclosed a list and said
that these were in exchange for specimens he had received from Chicago (2 February
1899, Field Museum archives). The list gives the name of the species and the
locality, and 15 of the species described by Day are included (see our Table, p. 154).
This material was accepted and incorporated on 17 March.
Other institutions, iS88-8g
According to the note in the British Museum Acquisition Register (see above,
p. 00), duplicates of Day's Indian fishes were sorted into five lots, totalUng 1876
specimens. No record of the other institutions has been found (BMNH.MS.Z.,
BMNH.MS.Doc.) beyond Giinther's suggestion of Edinburgh in his letter to Day.
There is no mention of Day fishes for 1889 in the Registers of the Royal Scottish
Museum in Edinburgh, although 173 British fishes were received from Day in 1882.
Edinburgh received fishes from the British Museum, but these were incorporated
much earlier (1882, 1883, 1886). Thus, 866 specimens are unaccounted for. Some
of these will have been specimens of Day species, but almost certainly they would
have repeated those already given to Leningrad and Chicago.
TYPES OF DAY'S SPECIES
As we have shown. Day gave or sold Indian fishes to twelve different institutions,
while a further five museums received Day specimens after his death. All but one
recorded institution (Genoa) possess representatives of the species he described
and the problem remains as to which he truly gave his types. One criterion should
obviously be Day's own indications, although like Bleeker and others of that period
Day does not always seem to have held undue reverence for the actual specimens
152 p. J. p. WHITEHEAD AND P. K. TALWAR
on which a description was founded. Sometimes he noted the fact, as for example
with the two specimens of Silurus punctatus sent to the British Museum, which he
said were part basis for his description (Day's list of lo March 1868, see p. 128). In
the same list, as well as on other occasions, he simply wrote 't3'pical' and it was
probably on such indications that museum curators WTote 'type' in their registers
(e.g. Calcutta, Florence and Leiden). To Peters he promised 'some types of my
Indian species' (22 August 1875, ZMB.MS.). On the other hand, the 'types' received
by the AustraUan Museum were merely those 'certified to by Day being part of his
original collection, and named by him' (Anon., 1885 : 42). This, and the reference
to types and tj'pical specimens cited in the letters, suggest that Day considered as
typical any specimens vouched for by himself as being the species that he described.
This is borne out also by the criterion that Day seems to have appUed in recog-
nizing Bleeker types amongst his own material, at least to judge by the Australian
Museum's acceptance of them as such.
The only modern criterion for Day's tj'pes is recognition of those undoubtedly
used in the original descriptions, but this is not always easy. Bleeker almost
invariablj' recorded total length (in mm), but Day often omitted size or gave an
approximate maximum (in inches). Another indication is the locahty, which is
usually stated. As we have shown for Day's clupeoid species (Talwar & \Miite-
head, 1971), recognition of Day types is as full of pitfalls as it is for Bleeker material
(Whitehead et al., 1966) ; thus, the possible type material for Spratelloides mala-
baricus contains members of two outwardly extremely similar species of different
genera.
We began this study with the statement that Day considered the British Museum
as a minor repository of his types. If one were to grade the various Day collections
in order of importance, the report in Nature (Anon., 1889) offers a clue.
The Imperial Museum at Calcutta possesses his type collection of Indian fishes ;
and collections formed by him are in the Natural History Museums at Leyden,
Berhn, Florence and Sydney, and in the British Museum. . . .
This information was provided by Day himself and it is confirmed in his last
letter to Giinther.
My type collection of Indian fishes went to Calcutta, No 2 to Sydney, No 3 to
Vienna, and Florence, Berlin and Leyden have had large numbers.
(II January 1889, BMNH.MS.G. 15)
This letter was written at the time that Day was sending his final batch, some
five thousand specimens but nonetheless his left-overs, to the British Museum.
It was six years since the AustraUan Museum purchase and ten years since he dis-
patched his figured specimens to Calcutta. Thus, apart from the material sent
to the British Museum up to 1870, what Giinther received in 1888-89 ^^'^s in Day's
estimate No. 4 or lower in importance. As in the case of the Austrahan Museum
collections, however, a number of the British Museum specimens have later been
considered types in a manner that amounts to a tacit nomination of lectotypes.
It would not be in the interests of stability to question this status except on the
grounds of conflict between specimen and original description or figure.
FRANCIS DAY (1829-1889) 153
In our Table (p. 154) we have listed possible types for the 328 species described
by Day. It must be emphasized that these in no way represent syntypical series ;
they are merely all those representatives of the species that cannot or have not
been excluded prima facie. In many cases the locality has not been taken into
consideration, nor the date of presentation or sale. Thus, each species must be
investigated carefully if the rather stringent rules of nomenclature are to be followed
and we cannot too strongly recommend that type designations are only attempted
during revisional studies.
Our Table shows that no type specimens can be found for 65 Day species (exclud-
ing replacement names) . For 7 of these the description was based solely on a Tickell
(or Haly) description. Of the remainder, possible type material for 34 species was
lost or destroyed in the Zoological Survey collections (the losses presumably mainly
occurred in the flood at Benares — see p. 134). Possible types of a further 3
species were apparently in the Colombo Museum in Sri Lanka but cannot now be
found, as also i in Paris. We have no information for the remaining species,
although some may have been lost at the Madras Museum (see p. 130) and others
may be among the dry specimens sent to Vienna and not yet found (see p. 147). In
many cases the designation of neotypes is probably justified, although a further
investigation is always advisable.
Finally, it is of interest to compare the total number of species in each institu-
tion for which possible types have been found.
Calcutta
248
British Museum
152
Sydney
102
Leiden
74
Vienna
73
BerUn
27
Leningrad
19
Chicago
15
Florence
15
Paris
II
Harvard
10
Calcutta is clearly the most important, and additionally so because many of the
specimens were figured. The British Museum appears to be next, but this is only
because of the large number included in the 1889 donation. It should be remem-
bered that many species had bj' that time been described for some twenty years
and the addition of subsequent specimens would often be highly likely. Dis-
counting the British Museum, Sydney comes next, followed by Leiden and Vienna
and then Berlin. This agrees quite closely with Day's own estimate of importance
and should be taken into account in the selection of lectotypes where a series exists
in several institutions.
TABLE OF NEW GENERA AND SPECIES DESCRIBED BY FRANCIS DAY, WITH REGISTERED NUMBERS FOR
POSSIBLE TYPE SPECIMENS IN ELEVEN INSTITUTIONS
r
The specimens for each particular species are not intended to represent syntypical series but are those which have not yet been excluded from consideration by reason of locality, date, etc., although
further investigation may warrant it. The index should be used in conjunction with this list since a runiber of clues to type status are given in the text.
Key: t figured specimen in Calcutta * dry specimen ( ) lost or destroyed.
New Genera
,\C.\NTHONOTUS Day, iS8S, Fishes of India, Suppl. : 807 [Type: Acmithonotus argenleus Day , 1888)
.^ILIICHTHYS Day, 1871, Proc. zool. Soc. Land. : 712 (Type: Ailiichthys punctata Day, 1871)
APOCRYPTICHTHYS Day, 1876, Fishes of India : 302 (Type: Apocryptes cantoris Day, 1870)
BR.\CHYGRAMMA Day, 1865, Proc. zool. Soc. Land. : 304 (Type: Brachygramma jerdoni Day, 1865)
GOGRIUS Day, 1867, Proc. zool. Soc. Land. : 563 (Type: Gogrius sykesii Day, 1867)
JERDONIA Day, 1870, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 700 (Type: Platacanthus maculatus Day, 1867)
JL\TSYA Day, 1889, Fauna Brit. India, Fishes. 1 : 292 (Type: as for Acanthonotus, preoccupied by
Bloch & Schneider, 1801)
MAYOA Day, 1869. Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 553 (Type: Mayoa modesta Day, 1869)
NANGRA Day, 1877, Fishes of India : 493 (Type: Pimelodus nangra Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822)
NEMACHILICHTHYS Day, 1878, Fishes of India : 611 (Type: Cobitis ruppelH Sykes, 1839)
PARANANDUS Day, 1865, Fishes of Malabar : 130 (Type: Caiopra malabarica Giinther, 1864)
PLATACANTHUS Day, 1865, Fishes of Malabar : 204 (Type: Platacanthus agrensis Day, 1865)
PRIACANTHICHTHYS Day, 1868, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 193 (Type: Priacanthichthys madras-
patensis Day, 1868)
PSEUDOSYNANCEIA Day, 1876, Fishes of India : 163 (Type: Pseudosynanceia melanostoma Day
1876)
Sydney Vienna Berlin Leiden Florence Leningrad Chicago Harvard Pare
CHONDRICHTHYES
CARCHARINIDAE
1. balfouri (HemigaUus)
2. elhoii [Carcfmrias)
3. malabaricus [Carcharias)
4. obtusus {Triaenodon)
5. tricuspidatus {Carcharias)
OSTEICHTHYES
AXGVILLIDAE
6. nialabaricus {Leptocephalus)
MURAENIDAE
. 7. nigra (Muraefia) [non Muraena nigra
Risso, 1 8 10]
OPHICHTHIDAE
8. microcephalus {Ophichthys)
XETTASTOMATIDAE
g. petersi (Saureyichelys)
CLUPEIDAE
10. iTialabaricus {Spraielloidfs)
11. inodistus {CJiaioessus]
12. sindensis {Clupea)
13. sladeni [Pellona)
14. variegata {Clupea)
1878, Fishes of India : 717, pi. 185 (4) (Waltair)
1878, Fishes of India : 716, pi. i8g (2) (Kurrachee)
1873, /. Linn. Soc. Lond. 11 : 529 (Paliport, Calicut)
1878, Fishes of India : 720, pi. 189 (3) (Kurrachee)
1S78, Fishes of India : 713, pi. 186 (i) (Sind)
1865, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 308 (Cochin)
1870, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 702 (Port Blair)
1878, Fishes of India : 665, pi. 170 (2) (Malabar)
1878, Fishes of India : 663, pi. 168 (6) (Orissa)
1873, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. ; 240 (Malabar coast)
1869, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 622 (Bassein R.)
1878, Fishes of India : 638, pi. 163 (2) (Kurrachee)
1869, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 623 (Irrawaddi R. at
M and a lay)
1869, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 623 (Irrawaddi R.)
(3i69t)
(2773')
2277't
(2772*)
2644t
2759t
250lt
2246t
26g5t, (A 1007- 2
ex.)
2630!, 2614
2672t, B 298
r2245t, B43. B 168,
L ? A 1020
1889.2. 1.4373
(jaws)
B 7843 —
1889. 2. 1. 2048 B 8288
1889.2. 1. 1879 B7637
1889. 2. 1. 1919-24 B 7642
1870.6.14.36 —
4558
1870.6. 14. 38
B 7676
10413 2726
— 2585
2586
ENGRAULIDAE
15. auratus {Engraulis)
GALAXIIDAE {doxihiinl, fide McDowall, 1973)
16. indicus (Galaxias)
SYSODONTIDAE
17. indicus {Saurus)
1865, Fishes of Malabar : 238, pi. ig (2) (Cochin) —
1888, Fishes of India, Suppi. : 806, fig. (Bengal, Madras) —
1873,7. Linn. Soc. Lond. II : 526 (Madras) 2337
1867. 5. 30.13,
1889. 2. 1. 1779-80,
1889.2.1.4855*,
I975-9-30.I4*
B 7672
2761
MYCTOPHIDAE
i8. indicus (Scopehts)
CYPRINWAE
19. ambassis [Barbu$)
argentea (Chela)
argenleus {Acanthonotits)
araiatus {Barbus)
alta (Garra)
aurolineatus {Perilatnpus)
baktri {Barilius)
bakeri (Rohtee)
bUckeri (Barilius [Pachystoinus])
blylhii {Barbus [Barbodes])
boopis [Chela)
bovanicus (Barbus)
brevidorsalis (Semiphtus)
bunmuica (Dattgila)
burmanicus (Barbus)
cacnikus (Labeo)
compressus (Barbus [Barbodes])
cunim (Rohtee)
denisonii (Labeo)
dobsom (Barbus [Barbodis])
dubius (Funtius [Barbodes])
dukai (Barbus)
41. elcgans (Paradanio)
42. cvezardi (Barilius)
43. grayi (Barbus)
44. guentheri (Barbus)
45. gutiatus (Opsarius)
46. himalayanus (Barbus [Barbodes])
47. inmmimtus (Barbus [Barbodes)]
48. interrupta (Barilius)
49- irregularis (Scaphtodott)
50. irregularis (Schizotborax)
51. jcrdoni (Barbus [Barbodes])
52. jcrdouii (Braihygramtna)
53- ierdonii [Garra)
laticeps (Ptychobarbus)
Icpidus (Puntius [Capoeta])
56. liueatus (Danio)
57. lithopidos (Barbus)
58. longiceps [Ptychobarbus)
59. niaderaspatensis (lisomus [Nuria])
60. nuilabarica (Garra)
61. tKalabaricus (Esomus)
62. tnalabaricus (OsUochilus)
63. t>u:clellandi (Barbus
(see also stolicxkanus , nom. nov.)
64. melanampyx (Labeo)
65- tnelanostigma [Barbus)
66. mtcrocephalus (Schizothorax)
Calcutta
1877. Fishes of India : 507, pi. ii8 (2) (Vizagapatnam) 1337!
1868, Proc, tool. Soc. Loud. : 583 (Kurnool)
1867, Proc. zooL Soc. Loud. : 301 (Bowany R.)
1888, Fishes of India, SuppL : 807 (Tenasserim)
1878, Fishes of India : 574, pi. 142 (7) (Madras)
1867, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 349 (Wynaad)
1865, Proc. zool. Soc. Loud. : 306 (Cochin)
1865, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 305 (Travancore, Cochin)
1873, Pfoc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 240 (Cottayam)
1872, /. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 41 (2) : 5 (Gan^ete)
i86g, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 555 (Tenasserim Prov.)
1873, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 708 (S. Canara)
1878, Fishes of India : 566, pi. 138 (i) (Bowany R.)
1873, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 239 (Neilgherry Hills)
1877, Fishes of India : 546, pi. 131 (2) (Moulmein,
Tavoy)
1878, Fishes of India : 572, pi. 141 (4) (Mergui)
1877. Fishes of India : 540, pi. 129 (3) (Sind)
1869, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 555 (? Kashmir)
1888, Fishes of India, SuppL : 807 (Moulmein)
1865, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 299 (Mundikyum)
1876, J. Linn. Soc. Lond. 12 : 574 (Deccan)
1867, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 291 (Bowany R.)
1878, Fishes of India : 564, pi. 143 (3) (Teesta R. at
Darjeeling)
1867, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 297 (Bowany R.)
1872, /. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 41 (2) : 326 (Puna)
1867, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 293 (Bowany R.,
KuUaar R.)
1868, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 582 (Kurnool)
1869, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 620 (Prome to Mandalay)
1872, /. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 41 (2) : 325 {Ussun R., nr
Simla)
1869, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 556 (Ceylon)
1869, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond. : 559 (Hotha)
1872, /. Asiat. Soc. Bengal 41 (2) : 324 (Sind Hills)
