156 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



eight or nine pounds, is taken in large quantities with hook and line, and constitutes 

 one of the most abundantly represented species in the Hobart fish market. As 

 many as four species of the allied genus Lotella, one of which, L. callarias, is 

 the Cod of the Melbourne fishermen, and another, L. marginata, the " Beardie " of the 

 Sydney fish market, extend as far north in their distribution as Port Jackson, in 

 New South Wales. The last-named species has been also obtained by the writer in 

 Tasmania. In face of these facts, the statement in Dr. Gunther's " Introduction to 

 the Study of Fishes," p. 284, that the fish fauna of Australia, as compared with 

 that of New Zealand, is characterised by " an apparent total absence of all Gadoids," 

 requires modification. 



It is a noteworthy circumstance that the rivers of Europe and North America 

 yield a single fresh- water representative of the Cod family. This is the well-known 

 Burbot or Eel-pout, Lota vulgaris, limited in the British islands to the streams of 

 Yorkshire, Durham, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire, but is by no means 

 plentiful in either of these counties. In shape and aspect the Burbot very closely 

 resembles the Australian Lotellae, and grows to an attested length of over three feet, 

 and a weight of from six or eight to as much as twenty pounds. In English waters, 

 however, a weight of two or three pounds is the more common calibre. While 

 no true fresh-water Gadoid has as yet been discovered in Australia the so-called 

 Murray Cod, as hereafter explained, being a perch one exceedingly interesting fish 

 that constitutes the sole type of a family most nearly related to the Gadidae is 

 abundant in certain of the rivers of Tasmania and the Southern Australian colonies. 

 This is the fresh-water Black-fish, of the Australian colonists, Gadopsis marmoratus, 

 an excellent table fish, which, in the Eingarooma in North Tasmania, not 

 unfrequently attains to a weight of ten pounds and nearly three feet in length.* 



The general contour of the Australian Gadopsis is very much that of such 

 gadoids as Phycis or Pseudophycis, and, like the former, it has filamentous, bifurcated, 

 jugular fins. Owing to the fact, however, that a small portion of the membranes of 

 the elongate dorsal and anal fins are supported by slender spines in place of flexible 

 rays, ichthyologists have decided upon the relegation of this type to an independent 



* Dr. Gunther, Catalogue of Fishes, Vol. IV., p. 318, refers to an example of this species in the 

 British Museum Collection as a fine specimen, which is only four inches in length, with the added note that 

 it attains to twice these dimensions. A correct systematic record of the adult dimensions attained by the 

 many species described would be a valuable addition to a subsequent edition of this Catalogue. 



