FISHES PHENOMENAL AND ECONOMICAL. 155 



Castlenau, is declared by Professor McCoy to possess no distinctive characters that 

 he can detect when compared with the Common Mackerel, Scomber scomber, of the 

 European seas. There is likewise an Anchovy abundant on the Southern Coast-lines 

 of Australia that so closely resembles the much-esteemed European species that it 

 is indifferently described in ichthyological works as Engraulis encrasicholus, tar. 

 antipodum, or as Engraulis antarcticus. 



Apart from the close affinity subsisting between the specific types enumerated 

 in the foregoing paragraphs, an interesting parallelism obtains between certain more 

 abnormal genera which possess characteristic representatives in both the North 

 Temperate and South Temperate hemispheres, separated by a wide tropical area from 

 which they are absent. In this manner, that most singular type, the Northern 

 Chimsera, Chimcera monstrosa, possesses its counterpart in the so-called Elephant-fish, 

 Callorhynchus antarcticus, of the New Zealand and Southern Australian seas, while 

 the peculiarly modified sucking fishes, Gobiesocidas, represented in British waters by 

 several species of Lepidogaster, find their co-types on the Australian Coast-line 

 in several species of the genus Crepidogaster. 



The Cod family, Gadidse, yields a remarkable instance of a group of littoral 

 fishes with allied but diverse genera, subsisting in Australian and other South Temperate 

 waters, and in those of the North Temperate zone, with an at present impassable 

 barrier of tropical ocean between them. Gadus proper, embracing eighteen species, 

 includes such well-known forms as the Common Cod, G. morrhua ; the Haddock, 

 G. ceglefinm ; the Whiting, G. merlangus ; the Pollack, G. pollachius ; the Saith 

 or Coal Fish, G. virens, and other European market species, which are entirely 

 confined to the Arctic and North Temperate zones. The Hake, Merlucius vulgaris, 

 however, has its counterpart in M. gayi of the New Zealand and Magellan seas ; and 

 the Rocklings, genus Motella, numbering three British species, have also represen- 

 tatives on the Coast of New Zealand and at the Cape of Good Hope. There are 

 but two genera, Lotella and Pseudophycis, belonging to the true Cod family, which 

 inhabit New Zealand and Southern Australian waters and are almost entirely 

 restricted to this area of distribution. Both of them are very nearly allied to the 

 European genus Phycis, including the so-called Forkbeards, P. blennioides and 

 bremusculus, of British waters, from which they differ only in the relatively less 

 reduced condition of development of the ventral fins. The largest and commonest 

 form, Pseudophycis barbatus, is known as the Rock Cod in Tasmania and New 

 Zealand. It grows from a more general average of two or three to a weight of 



