It is remarkable that none of the early authors commented on the differences in colouration and/or body shape
in specimens from different areas. In “The Asian Arowana”, a book for dragon fish hobbyists, Goh & Chua (1999)
present photographs of a number of colour varieties, again diverging from the earlier published colour figures.
Pouyaud et al. (2003: 288) analysed “36 specimens representing all known colour varieties (except the Cross Back
Golden) that died since 1998 after being caught by fishermen or kept and bred in tanks either by Indonesian
governmental research institutions or by private fish farmers.” The examined material was a mixture of wild and
cultivated specimens. Unfortunately, type series of their new species are also composed of wild specimens,
descendants of a wild brood stock, and offspring of private strains. It is also regrettable that the authors chose
juvenile specimens to represent two of the three new species as well as for the neotype. Pouyaud et al. (2003) did
not compare the colours of their new species with those of the figures by early authors mentioned above, with one
exception. They proposed to restrict S. formosus to the “Green variety” on the basis of the colour description of
Weber & De Beaufort (1913), which is cited in full. When the last mentioned description is compared with the
colour figure from Müller & Schlegel (1840) it is clear that they are quite different. If Pouyaud et al. (2003) had
checked the original figure, they would have noticed that it does not compare to the colouration of specimens of the
“Green variety”. In certain characters Pouyaud et al. “Silvers” seems a better match.