HEVISION OF JUSTBALIAN THEEAPONS.—OGILBT AND McCULLOCH. Ill 



Historical : — This handsome grunter was first described by the late Dr. Albert 

 Giinther, more than half a century ago, from specimens sent to the British Museum 

 from the " Head of Mosquito Creek near Darling Downs" — a South Queensland 

 locality which we have failed to identify — and the Gwydir River, N.S.W. These 

 specimens, as is always the case when they have been for some time in a preservative, 

 had lost their distinctive color-markings, and become " grayish, each scale with a 

 darker margin" ; consecpiently they were encumbered with the inappropriate name 

 by which they are now known. Some twenty years later Macleay identified certain 

 small fishes, forwarded to him from a recently filled dam at Warialda, in the Gwydir 

 District, as belonging to this species, and accounted for their presence in an outlying 

 dam, " which had been dry a few months back," on the hypothesis that the ova had 

 been conveyed from more permanent waterholes " adhering to the feathers of ducks 

 or other arpiatic birds." We think that the size of these fishes, given as " about four 

 inches," militates against this theory, for such fishes are of slow growth and could 

 hardly attain to such a length in so short a time and in such a limited space. We are 

 more inclined to beheve it to be an ordinary case of suspended animation in individuals, 

 which had buried themselves in the mud when the water in the dam had sunk so low 

 as to leave them exposed to their many enemies. In his Report on the Shore Fishes 

 of the Challenger Expedition Giinther made an important addition to its distribution, 

 being able to record it from the " River Mary near the village of Tiaro," thus bringing 

 it across to the eastern slope of the Dividing Range. In 1881 Macleay in his Catalogue, 

 while adding nothing to the known distribution of T. unicolor, described as new two 

 more species of freshwater Thera-pon under the names T. truttaceus and T. longulus,^ 

 the former from the Endeavour River, N.Q., the latter from " freshwaters inland from 

 Port Darwin," N.T. Both of these we believe to be inseparable from Giinther's fish. 

 T. truttaceus was subsequently recorded by Zietz from specimens obtained by the 

 Horn Expedition in Red Bank Creek, Einke River, Palm Creek, and Walker's Gorge, 

 and some years later W^aite endorsed Zietz's identification from the examination of 

 specimens collected in the same district by Mr. S. A. White's expedition into the 

 interior. About four years after the publication of Macleay's new sj)ecies de Vis 

 received from Dr. Ling Roth some small fishes which he had obtained in Lake Elphin- 

 stone, a turgid sheet of water, some six miles long by two wide, lying landlocked 

 betAveen the watersheds of the Nebo and Suttor Rivers, inland fron\ Mackay, M.Q. 

 These he considered to be undescribed, and named them after their place of origin, 

 stating, however, that they were nearly allied to T. longulus Macleay. An examination 

 of the types shows no characters of sufficient value to separate them from T. unicolor. 

 Finally the senior author, having received from Mr. D. O'Connor a fine Therapon, 

 collected by Mr. White in the Upper Condamine, described it as T. idoneus, while noting 

 its relationship to Macleay's and de Vis' species above referred to. He also gave an 

 interesting account of the way in which these fishes sometimes appear by myriads in 

 creeks where they were previously unknown, and after remaining for some time 

 disappear with the same suddenness as marked their advent. 



Some years ago Stead exhibited before the Linnean Society of New South Wales 

 certain fishes, which were said to have come up through an artesian bore from a 

 depth of 943 feet at Corella, in North- Western New South Wales. These he identified 

 with T. unicolor. It was remarked that in most of these specimens the eye was 

 damaged, or in some cases entirely absent, and from this circumstance the opinion 

 was expressed that the fishes did not live and breed in the subterranean waters, but 

 had individually found their waj^- thither. 



^ We have examined the type of T. truttaceus which is preserved in the Macleay Museum. 

 The typical specimen of T. longulus a.ppears to have gone astray. 



