278 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Cliipea arcuata Jenyns. Our gear was even less suitable for sampling this small coastal but mainly 

 pelagic species, which is very closely related to the European C. sprattus, and which is known to be 

 abundant at times within the area surveyed. In life the muscles show up yellow through the skin, 

 permitting rapid distinction from small fry of C. fuegensis of similar size. Doubtless a frequent food 

 of larger fishes, we only happened on it in numbers at St. WS8g, where thirty-nine were taken in the 

 N7-T attached to the back of the trawl. This station was worked in very shoal water close in to the 

 north-east coast of Tierra del Fuego. Quite possibly the normal habitat of the species is too coastal 

 for it to have been taken by the fine ' accessory nets ' on other occasions. 



GALAXIIDAE 

 Galaxios attemiatiis (Jenyns). This fish was not trawled by us— it is improbable that they ever depart 

 far enough from the coast to be sampled by a trawl— but a Falkland specimen was readily obtained 

 for Norman's report of 1937 by Mr Bennett. The majority of the galaxiids are fresh-water species, 

 though an increasing number have been found in the sea. Most of them can probably be regarded as 

 anadromous. G. attenuatus is catadromous, descending to brackish water or to the sea itself to spawn. 

 It is possible that much of the spawning takes place in the lower reaches of estuaries rather than in 

 the sea itself (Phillips, 1924), but it is certain that the larvae must be widely distributed in the sea, 

 or the species could never have populated the smaller brooks in which it is found, for many of these 

 have no estuarine transition area at their mouths. Moreover, there is an interval between the time of 

 known spawnings and the records of upstream movements of larvae. A species of Galaxias unknown 

 m fresh waters, G. bollansi Hutton, was described in 1899. Very recently, Scott (1941) has shown 

 that apart from G. attenuatus (which he studied in very great detail in an earlier paper there quoted) 

 the type species of the genus, G. truttaceous Cuvier, is euryhaline, and that 'it is not improbably 

 facultatively catadromous, and that when not confined in land-locked waters it may retain the pre- 

 sumably primitive spawning habit of the family'. Since Scott had already shown (1938, pp. 125-6) 

 that young G. truttaceous may arrive with the upstream spring immigration of G. attenuatus, that 

 adults descend (1941, pp. 57 et seq.) to almost completely saline sea water, and that when ripe 

 they are found at or near the coast (p. 68), his conclusion seems most cautiously worded. 



I cannot understand why the catadromous migration of G. attenuatus was ever doubted Beginning 

 with Hutton in 1872I the facts had been described by several observers in New Zealand, Tasmania 

 and Australia, who were familiar with the fish in fife. It is true that McCulloch (1915) had had to 

 improvise a very primitive experiment in the endeavour to prove his point, but there is nothing to 

 show that It was not effective ; and Meek's assertion (1916, p. 147) that the 3 J-4 cm. larvae are denatant 

 IS at variance with McCulloch's direct observations. It is, indeed, probable that the catadromous 

 migration of G. attenuatus was well known and understood by the Maori— who still eat them— before 

 white men ever came to New Zealand. Phillipps (1919, quoting Best, 1903) was doubtful of one tradi- 

 tional Maori account that described spawning at the mouths of rivers. He then thought that the 

 spawning was entirely marine, but within five years his own observations (Phillipps, 1924) had shown 

 that the Maori account was substantially correct. It may seem unnecessary to labour the point now 

 but G attenuatus is an important fish in New Zealand, where the ascending fry are captured and 

 canned as whitebait', at one time the only fishery product exported from the Dominion Moreover 

 visiting the Dommions twenty years afterwards in a research ship, one found that biologists 'from 

 home still tended to be weighed on their willingness to accept enlightenment on the subject 



The general distribution of G. attenuatus is of particular interest; it is known from southern 

 Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, both coasts of Patagonia and the Falkland Islands. The family 



^ I have not seen this paper. 



