FISHES PHENOMENAL AND ECONOMICAL. 159 



years hence, increase to such an extent as to be available as a food supply. The 

 fish transported, numbering several hundred, averaged from a quarter to half a pound 

 in weight. After porterage by train from Morgan, on the Murray river, to Adelaide, 

 they were there stored for a while in a pond in the Botanic Gardens of that 

 city. Thence they were shipped in batches by the Orient and P. and O. mail steamers 

 to Albany, a distance of over one thousand miles, and from there conveyed by rail 

 again to their ultimate destinations. The majority of the fish were liberated in the 

 waters of the Upper Swan or Avon, in the neighbourhoods of York and Beverley. 

 and the residue were turned into a lake, receiving constant accessions of fresh water, 

 some ten miles out of Albany. It will be interesting to note the results of these 

 acclimatisation processes a few years hence, and should the fish have commenced to 

 multiply, steps should be taken to distribute them to other waters suitable for their 

 reception, where their presence will be of public utility. A year previously (1893) a 

 small tentative consignment of the Murray river Golden Perch, Ctenolates ambiguus, 

 and also the Victorian Silver Eel, Anguilla australis, was transported by the writer 

 vid Adelaide to the Upper Swan river, and according to latest accounts are doing 

 well there. The last-named type has, in fact, already commenced to multiply. 



Before dismissing the subject of the Murray Cod, it is worthy of record that 

 several huge members of the same genus, Oligorus, frequent the Australian sea coasts 

 and estuaries, being most abundantly represented among the coral reefs and in the 

 estuaries of the tropical districts. One of the best known of these species, Oligorus 

 gigas, first reported from New Zealand, attains to a weight of three or four hundred- 

 weight. Two distinct species, 0. Goliath and 0. terra-regince from Queensland and other 

 North Australian waters, rival it in dimensions. The popular title attached to these 

 huge fish in Australia is that of Gropers, a name, however, which must not be 

 confused with the several varieties of fish, Cossyphus, Chironemus and Chilodactylus, 

 locally bearing the same name, which belong to the southern or temperate Australian 

 waters. The so-called Rock Cods, including the allied genera, Serranus and Plectropoma, 

 are additional representatives of the Perch family, which enter very extensively into 

 the commercially important fish fauna of Australia, being especially abundant, in both 

 numbers and varieties, in the sub-tropical and tropical districts. Many of these fish 

 are remarkable for their brilliant colouration, being variously ornamented with stripes 

 or bars or spots. In one especially handsome species, Plectropoma, Richardsoni, not 

 unfrequently exposed for sale in the Fremantle fish market, Western Australia, the 

 ground colour of the body is a most brilliant carmine with a tendency to yellow 



