108 , NEW SOUTH WALES 



Centrofogon rohvstios, Gunth.,is in all our eastern rivers. It belongs 

 to the Scorpceniche family, and a genus which is distinguished by having 

 no groove on the occiput, no pectoral appendages and no cleft behind 

 the fourth gill. The species is a small brownish fish, marbled with 

 black. Its scales are small, and the fourth and fifth dorsals are the 

 longest. ]S one of these three fishes are of any commercial importance 

 whatever. It has already been shown what peculiarities this fish has 

 under the name of the "JBuU-rout." 



GALAXIAD^. 



In the upper and shallower parts of the creeks and rivers rising 

 in the Blue Mountains one or two species of Galaxias are found. 

 They are cylindrical fishes of 8 or 10 inches in length, and without scales, 

 inhabiting only the colder rivers of the Southern Pacific. They are 

 probably good for the table, but they are rare and for the most part 

 small. They are known to some as the " Mountain trout. " In 

 describing a new species from Mt. Kosciusko, G. findlayi, the Hon. W. 

 Macleay makes the following remarks (Px'oceed. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., 

 vol. 7, p. 106) : — "I receiA^ed from Baron von Mueller, a few days ago, 

 two specimens of a small fish which inhabits the icy pools of the snowy 

 range in the neighbourhood of Mt. Kosciusko. The Baron writes as 

 follows : — ' I saw the same little creature in several of the waters high 

 up in the Alps, during my exploration of the Snowy Mountains in 

 1853-4, and 1855, and again in later years when travelling, but I was 

 in the then pathless alpine regions, unable to preserve zoological 

 specimens. When in 1874, I for the second time ascended Mt. 

 Kosciusko, I saw this species of fish again in the little glacier ponds, 

 but missed catching any, my time being so much occupied, during my 

 brief stay on the snowy summit, in the pursuit of plants.' The two 

 specimens now to be described were captured by S. Findlay on Mt. 

 Kosciusko. They are both small, the largest not exceeding 3 inches, and 

 evidently immature." Macleay then refers to a former paper read before 

 the same Society (vol. 5, p. 45), describing another species of that genus, 

 from the head waters of the Colo Biver at Mount Wilson, and he pointed 

 out the probability of fishes of this kind being abundant, and of con- 

 siderable size in the cold snowy streams of the Australian Alps. He 

 remarked in the same paper that though such fishes were found in the 

 upper tributaries of the Grose, at heights of two or thi-ee thousand feet, 

 none were found in the Nepean and Hawkesbury, into which these 

 streams flow^ed. The author attributed this not so much to the falls as 

 to the diiference of temperature, and mentioned that its distribution 

 showed it to be essentially a cold-water fish. The family is a remark- 

 able one, containing only two genera, Galaxias and Neochanna. Both 

 are small fresh-water fishes, only found in the Southern Hemisphere. 

 Neochanna is a remarkable mudfish of New Zealand, which is caught 

 in burrows which it excavates in clay or consolidated mud, at a distance 

 from the water. It is, says Dr. Criinther, a degraded form of Galaxias, 

 from whicli it only difffjrs by the absence of ventral fins. These fish 

 have no scales or barbels, they have a thick lip, and the ova fall into the 

 cavity of the abdomen before exclusion. Altogether the family is a 

 most isolated one, having no relationship with any other. " The species 



