BY J. DOUGLAS OGILBY. 29 
to which the fishes just referred to belong, and has a re- 
markable, if not a romantic history. Nearly eight years. 
ago Mr. Alfred Gale, the well known apiarist, iuformed me 
that he had seena number of fishes in a small stone 
tank, filled with various aquatic plants, in the Botanie 
Gardens, Sydney. W.th the permission of Mr. Maiden, 
we obtained some specimens, which to our astonishment 
proved to be a perfectly new eeotrin belonging to the 
Carassiops group, but differing generically in the larger 
number of dorsal spines and the greatly increased number 
of vertebre. On these characters with many others of 
purely specific value, I named the species Austrogobio galii. 
Exhibit E). I have since found that is it a common 
Southern Queensland species known to boys as the “ Fire- 
tail,’ and probable tound its way into the Sydney tank by 
means of ova attached to the leaves of water plants. 
Several theories have been propounded to account for 
the fail of various fishes during heavy rain-storms, 
the most generally accepted being that the phenomenon 
is due to a waterspout, but I think that the considerations 
here put forward will show that such a contention is 
untenable ; in all authenticated cases the fishes, when ex- 
amined by an expert—a very necessary proviso*—were 
found to belong to spec es wholly confined to a fresh-water 
existence, and it is a matter of common knowledge that we 
have nowhere in Queensland so large a body of fresh water 
as to be capable of giving birth to a water spout of such di- 
mensions as to draw up withit hundreds of fishes ; besides, 
a waterspout would not dissolve in rain but would come down 
en masse, to the destruction of the district on which it fell ; 
also in both the cases of which I have cognizance the species 
affected were bottom-feeding fishes which would hardly 
come under the influence of a waterspout as would such 
high-swimming fishes as the fry of mullet or bony bream. 
It seems to me that a much more feasible method of ac- 
counting for the phenomenon is to be found in the accom- 
panying explanation, which is, I believe, here suggested for 
the first time: Given that the cyclonic wind that usually 
precedes and, at least during its earlier stages, accompanies 
*The Cooper’s Plains’ -fishes were supposed to be young whiting (Sillago). 
