4) 

 INLETS AND OFFING FISHEUIES — THEIR COHRELATION. 105 



but let us take the official figures, aud suppose our seaboard for pm*poses of 

 the fisheries to be 680 miles in length. That seaboard is indented by large 

 bays like Twofold, Jervis, Port Stephens, and Botany, and by an almost 

 incredible number of inlets, the sea outlets ot" lagoons or lakes, varying in 

 area from 100 to 100,000 acres. Add to these the embouchures of a large 

 number of rivers and creeks springing from the main range or its foot-hills, 

 and we have a vast and varied series of fish nurseries distributed along the 

 entire length of our coast -line, the importance of which to the support of a 

 constant stream of supply of the very best form of our food fishes has never 

 yet been properly represented. Nor has the correlative value of these inlets 

 to the migratory and other families of our sea fishes been, so far as I know, 

 presented in its proper light. Between the coast-line and the 100-fathom 

 line various intermediate lines ot soundings have been taken, but no banks 

 of any extent, I may say no true banks at all have been discovered. Deep 

 soundings seem, as a rule, to approach every considerable promontory or 

 high land along the whole length of our coast-line, and to recede eastward 

 between the headlands of all bights. There are almost innumerable sunken 

 rocks, known as " Bunboras," and large areas of foul ground, haunted by 

 all varieties of rock-loving fish, particularly by the schnapper, the kingfish, 

 and the traglin. There are islands, and islets, and rocks-awash in large 

 variety, and there are the submarine continuations of rocky formations 

 jutting out (below the sea level) for several, sometimes so far as 10 or 15 

 miles from land. In short, the offings afford all the variety of sea-bottom 

 suitable as feeding grounds for our special forms of bottom fish, and among 

 these for the schnapper, a fish which in our waters may, for economic 

 purpose, stand for the cod of Northern Seas, just as the mullet, the 

 most prolific of our high-swimming or surface fish, may be regarded as the 

 substitute, for like purposes, of the herring of Northern Seas ; but we must 

 not fall into the prevalent error of assuming that our seas can ever afford 

 such a harvest of schnapper or mullet as do the Northern Seas of Europe 

 and America of cod and herring. The fact is that the possible "output" 

 of schnapper is very limited compared with that of the cod family, and vast 

 as are the schools of mullet, which from March to May in every year — 

 sometimes as early as February — swarm out of every considerable river, 

 lake, and inlet along the seaboard from the Gippsland Lakes to the Tweed 

 Eiver, that fish bears no comparison in the matter of fecundity with the 

 clupeids, of which our " maray " is the xiustralian representative of the 

 pilchard variety of that family. 



True, we have never yet seriously attempted to gather in the harvest of 

 our fisheries situated beyond half a day's sail from Port Jackson. Hundreds 

 of square miles of the best of our grounds lie beyond the range of fishing- 

 boat or railway, and many of these are still, to all practical purposes, virgin 

 fisheries, and likely to remain so until steamers with cool chambers shall 

 establish business relations between them and the metropolitan market. 

 These virgin fisheries are, however, precisely the same as were the once 

 famous grounds between Broken Bay and Port Hacking. They are 

 stocked in exactly the same way as Long Eeef and the Coogee offing 

 grounds were once and might still be stocked, and a score of equally 

 eelebrtfted and productive grounds near Sydney which have satisfied our 

 wants for more than half a century, but are now worked out. An examination 

 of the Admiralty charts for those sections of the coast which lie northward 

 of Terrigal and southward of Stanfield Bay, or, say Port Hacking, will best 

 explain my meaning, if accompanied by a slight knowledge of the localities 

 so much the better. The reader unprovided with charity will necessarily 



