69 



SOME TASMANIA N FISHES. 

 By J. Douglas Ogilby. 

 (Communicated bj Alexander Morton, Esq.) 

 Bead May 2Sth, 1896. 



Having occasion some time ago to compare certain Tas- 

 manian fislies with their New South Wales representatives, I 

 applied for assistance to Mr. Alexander Morton, Curator of 

 the Tasmanian Museum, Hobart, who, with a commendable 

 promptitude and liberality which, with advantage to Aus- 

 tralian biology, might be well imitated, forwarded unre- 

 servedly a number of the required species, with the 

 suggestion that I should embody the result of my researches 

 in the form of a paper to the Royal Society. 



The following remarks, the outcome of that suggestion, 

 deal with a few of the more interesting fishes received from 

 Mr. Morton, special attention having been given, as requested,, 

 to the AiiigilidcB. 



The earliest record of the occurrence of this family in 

 Tasmanian waters is to be found in Sir John Richardson's 

 second notice of the fishes collected at Port Arthur, and 

 sent to England by Commissary-General F. J. Lempriere. 

 In this paper, which appeared in 1840, a gray mullet is 

 mentioned under the name Dajaus* diemensis, but without 

 detailed description ; in the following year, however, a very 

 full and accurate diagnosis of the species appeared in the 

 Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, and some 

 years later both the Tasmanian and New Zealand species 

 were figured by the same author in the Voyage of the 

 Erebus and Terror as distinct fishes. Modern writers,, 

 with the exception of Castelnau and Macleay who follow 

 him, are satisfied as to the identity of the two forms, and so 

 we find Dr. Giinther, in 1861, writing of them under the name 

 of Agonosioma forsteriy he having quite unnecessarily changed 

 the construction of Bennett's generic name, though, as re- 

 marked by Dr. Gill, he has retained this orthography in the 

 fifth volume of his Catalogue of Fishes in the analogous 

 names Plecostomus, Chaitostomus, etc. 



In 1842 the occurrence of the species on the Australian 

 coast was noted for the first time by the Rev. Leonard 

 Jenyns from a dried specimen collected at King George's 

 Sound by Darwin during the Voyage of the Beagle,, 

 subsequent to which no record of it is to be met with, until 

 in 1872 Count Castelnau records it as abundant on the coast 

 of Victoria, reverting, as before mentioned, to Richardson's 



* Dajaus, Cvvier and Valenciennes, Hist. Nat. Poiss. xi. p. 164, 1636 ; type,. 

 Mugil inonticola, Hsmcvoit — Agonostomus monticola. 



