Zoology.'] NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. ^Fishes. 



carry tlie blackish colour through the middle of the fin to the two extended filaments ; 

 the rest of the fin and the soft dorsal pale orang-e; anterior part of dorsal, anal, 

 pectoral, and ventral, as well as throat and hell}^, whitish; iris silver bluish-white. 

 Length from snout to base of caudal (excluding fin) 2 in. 1 line; proportional 

 length of head, y-/^; length of snout, ~[%^; diameter of orbit, ^gij; interorbital 

 space, i^ij; length of pectoral, y>,",^; ventrals, ■^~^; snout to origin of dorsal, y-5%^; 

 to end of dorsal, i",',-, ; length of caudal, without filaments, -{^^•, filaments, xlij; 

 greatest depth of body about middle, ^i^^; depth of tail, jj-^; thickness of middle 

 of body, tSj. 



This little fisli Created a great sensation by appearing in large 

 numbers about the middle of October, 1884, at the piers at 

 Williamstown, in Hobson's Bay, and, being reported to the Com- 

 missioner of Customs as the young of the Californian Salmon, 

 were sent to me as an important matter to be determined. Even 

 the Acanthopterygious character of the dorsal fin, one might have 

 supposed, would have prevented any one acquainted with fish from 

 confounding this with any sort of Salmon. The Inspectors of 

 Fisheries and others dealing officially mth the fishes of our waters 

 are greatly retarded in their business for want of recognisable 

 figures of most of the native sorts, many of which, like the present 

 species, have never been figured. The illustrations of the natural 

 colours of the living fishes which I expect to present in these 

 Decades will, I hope, diminish the difficulty of recognising them 

 in future, and enable observations on habits, migrations, and times 

 and places of breeding of the different sorts to be attributed 

 correctly to the definitely-named and classified species. 



This is the second species of Trachinops known, and is easily 

 distinguished from the Sydney T. tceniatus (Giinth.) by the 

 darkness of the back, without the light longitudinal band of that 

 species ; which also has much more prolonged central filaments 

 of the caudal fin, a much lower dorsal fin, and more numerous 

 scales along the lateral line than in the present one. The 

 lateral line rises from the upper end of the gill-opcniug to the 

 anterior end of the dorsal ; the triangular space on nape between 

 these deflected ends of the two lateral lines being covered with 

 very much smaller scales than those of the body ; the lateral 

 line, of strongly keeled tubular scales, runs along the base of 

 the dorsal fin, separated from it by two rows only of the minute 

 scales such as are above their anterior ends on the nape. 



[ 342 J 



