Bulletin 3 - Publications of the IAS Fellows

FOREWORDThis ‘Foreword’ should serve as a preface also since I happen to be one of theauthors of this Bulletin. Some personal reference, therefore is unavoidable.My association with investigations relating to breeding habits and developmentof fishes goes back to a period of about three and a half decades and despite exigenciesof service and vicissitudes of official career it had been possible to maintain contactwith the subject more or less uninterruptedly. At the time of initiation of work in thisfield the scattered and sketchy nature of the relevant literature became evident and theneed for bringing them together and reviewing them was keenly felt. An attempt wasmade in this direction resulting in the account entitled “Breeding habits and developmentof Indian freshwater and brackishwater fishes” which was published by me in 1946 intwo parts in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. This, I should say,was well received and soon after, with the change of assignment to fisheries researchafter a decade of service as an entomologist, it became possible for me to carry onwork on the life-histories of fishes as a routine rather than as a hobby. With theliterature collected till then two fairly comprehensive bibliographies entitled “Bibliographyof breeding habits and development of fishes of inland waters of India” and“Bibliography of breeding habits and development of estuarine and marine fishes ofIndia” were published in 1950 and 1951 respectively in the Journal of the ZoologicalSociety of India. Incidentally it may be stated that these were the first bibliographies tobe published in fisheries and marine sciences in the Indian Region and could be said tohave paved the way for others.The present bibliography covers the earlier ones issued also. The annotationsare brief, just to indicate the most salient aspects pertaining to the subject in theconcerned reference. No annotation however detailed could substitute any originalarticle and hence those interested are advised to refer the original contributions. Toavoid confusion in most cases, scientific names as given by the authors are used andthe validity of these has not been gone into. Reference to figures has been inadvertentlyleft out in some of the annotations and this may be condoned.Every effort has been made to make the bibliography as comprehensiveas possible and authors would be thankful for bringing to their notice,