80 THB VICTOUIAN NATURALIST, 



Port Fairy. Also, as new for S.W. Victoria — Brachycome 

 scapigera, D. C, from Hawkesdale ; Potamogefon jyerfoliaius, 

 L., from Merri River, Warrnambool ; Carex gunniana, Booth, 

 from Hawkesdale. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE FRESH-WATER EEL 

 IN AUSTRALIA AND ITS MEANS OF DISPERSAL. 



By T. S. Hall, M.A. 

 {Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, lOlh Ju/ij, 190o.) 



The presence of eels in isolated dams and waterholes has long 

 been a puzzle to people in general, and they decline to believe 

 that they found their way there by scrambling and wriggling 

 through the grass in wet weather. The explanation is too simple; 

 and whirlwinds, or the transport of eggs by birds, are invoked to 

 account for their presence, it may be, many miles from running 

 water. During the past few years the fact, long suspected, that 

 fresh-water eels breed only in the sea has been proved beyond 

 dispute for the European eel, and there have been no reasons 

 advanced for believing it otherwise in the case of our Australian 

 species. The young eel is quite unlike the adult, being ribbon- 

 like and rather deep, with a small head. By the end of the first 

 year it has practically assumed the adult form, and is about a 

 couple of inches long. It now leaves the deep water, approaches 

 the coast, and begins to ascend the rivers. The young eels pass 

 up in enormous shoals, and their journeys are in parts of England 

 known as " eel-fares." 



I remember, as a boy, seeing an eel-fare at the rapids on the 

 Barwon, known as Buckley's Falls, a few miles out of Geelong. 

 We caught dozens of them with our hands as they wriggled up 

 the rocks in the damp places where the current was weak. 

 They were ravenously hungry, and though only a couple of 

 inches long, and as thin as a leather bootlace, we caught them on 

 hooks baited with worms as large as themselves. I regret that I 

 cannot say the time of the year when this took place. 



Passing up the streams in these numbers they can in wet 

 weather find their way all over the country, and it is doubtless in 

 this manner that isolated holes are frequently reached. However, 

 the larger eels will also travel over swampy ground for great 

 distances. I quote another observation of my own. At Moolap, 

 some five miles east of Geelong, in a paddock I knew as a boy, 

 was a slight depression, which in very wet weather was covered 

 for about an acre with water up to one's knees. The water 

 drained away along a furrow in a ploughed field, and two miles 

 further on, over almost level country, entered a small drain 

 about two feet deep. This, after a mile or so, entered the Reedy 

 Lakes, which are a series of large swamps along the lower 



