.S2 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



in the Mary or Burnett Rivers, but further north, in the 

 Dawsoii and Fitzroy. The name of Burnett Salmon is oiven 

 tor the simple reason that the flesh is of a pink colour ; 

 beyond tins, there is not the slightest resemblance between 

 the two forms. In his recent report of the Queensland fishes, 

 Mr. Saville Kent states that the Ceratodus is much prized as 

 food. Tins is a mistake, for, as a matter of fact, it is very 

 oily and disagreeable and only eaten by Chinese and those 

 who can afford to get nothing better. From a scientific 

 point of view this is a great advantage and will in no small 

 degree tend to ensure its preservation. 



The Burnett River runs in a wide channel, with banks 

 often as much as fifty feet high, through country which is 

 very sand}^ and undulating with hill ranges, the surface 

 being composed in large part, at all events, of decom]iosed 

 gianitic rocks. For the greater part of the year, during all 

 the warm months, the river channel shows wide sand banks, 

 with only a comparatively^ nari'ow and shallow stream of 

 water, broadening out every now and then into wide deep 

 pools, where the river bed and banks are often formed of 

 great granite rocks. Into the river run numerous creeks, the 

 beds of which are usually quite dry and sandy in summer. 

 The Ceratodus always stays in the deep pools, and fishers 

 know well that it is to these they must go if they want to 

 catch the animal. It is possible that on rare occasions it 

 might bury itself in the mud, or to speak more correctly 

 sand, but it b}' no means normall}'' does this, and speaking 

 generally, 1 think it is .safe to say that Cei'atodus always 

 stays in the deep pools which through the heat of summer 

 retain at any rate a fair suply of water. In a season of 

 drought these pools may become isolated, but it is a rare 

 season in whicli there is not a plentiful trickle from one pool 

 to another, and some of these pools are quite a mile long. 



Whilst Protopterus makes cocoons of mud for itself during 

 the season of drought and is enabled to live through the 

 latter by the aid of its lung, its ally, Ceratodus, does no such 

 thing. Quite on the contrary, 1 believe that its lung is, at 

 all events as useful to it, if not more so, dui'ing the rainy as 

 during the hot season ; at the same time, it is always of use 

 as a subsidiary organ of respiration. 



It may here be mentioned that out of the water Ceratodus 

 is the most helpless and passive creature imagina)>le. It is 

 perfectly incapable of movement, its weak limbs, which 



