24 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



report on Fishes to the Queensland Government, states that 

 Ceratodus is a valuable food fish. This is a curious mistake. Its 

 flesh is very oily, coarse, and disagreeable and it is but rarely 

 eaten and then only by Chinese and those who can afford nothing 

 better. There is thus, I am thankful to feel, not much fear that 

 so interesting an animal will become rapidly exterminated. 



Now, as to its method of life. Ceratodus is a big fish, and may 

 reach the length of 6 ft., and even more. I believe the largest 

 ever caught weighed 87 lbs. It is always to be met with in the 

 deep pools, and not in the shallow waters and it is important to 

 notice that these pools are many of them of considerable extent — 

 some more than a mile long. In the hottest summer they 

 contain a good supply of water and thus, though occasionally a 

 Ceratodus may, of course, find its way into a shallow pool which 

 gets dried up, normally no such thing happens and the animal 

 passes its whole life in water. The usual idea is that the lung 

 is of service to the animal, as in the case of Protopterus, when the 

 waters practically dry up. I very much doubt if Ceratodus ever 

 makes for itself a mud cocoon, as Protopterus does. It may 

 possibly, but very rarely, bury itself in mud, but the fishermen 

 with whom I spoke and who were perfectly well acquainted 

 with the animal, knew nothing of its ever doing this. On the 

 contrary, I fancy that the lung is of at least as great service to the 

 beast during the wet weather as during the the dry season — 

 and probably even of greater. 



Normally, then, we may say that Ceratodus never leaves the 

 water. If by any chance it gets out of the water it is perfectly help- 

 less. You may put one close to the edge and there it lies 

 passively. Its weak limbs are quite incapable of sustaining the 

 weight of the body. Nor can it live out of the water, unless 

 kept constantly damp, for more than a very few hours — not, in- 

 deed, so long as the Jew-fish from the same river. In the water, 

 however, it constantly uses its lung. Sitting by the stream when 

 all is quiet in the evening you can hear a diminutive kind of 

 spouting going on, the animal at intervals rising to the surface 

 and expiring and inspiring air much as a minute whale might do. 

 Out of the water, too, it does not open and shut its gill flaps like 

 an ordinary fish but they remain tightly shut and the animal 

 opens and closes its mouth, to all appearances breathing like one 

 of the higher forms. 



If we consider the environment of the Ceratodus we shall see 

 that there are two special and constantly recurring conditions 

 under which a lung would be useful to it. 



In the wet season the tributary creeks, dry in summer, become 

 transformed into roaring torrents and when once you have seen 

 the great sandbanks along the river bed and the dry sandy 

 country through which the creeks pass you can easily recognize 



