FISHES PHENOMENAL AND ECONOMICAL. 161 



Pagrus unicolor. This fine species is abundant all round the Southern Coast-line, 

 extending northwards on the Eastern Coast to Mackay, in Queensland, and to 

 Adelaide, in South Australia. What would appear to be a racial variety only of 

 the same fish occurs also on the Coast of Western Australia, as far north as the 

 Abrolhos Islands and Shark's Bay. Adult individuals of this magnificent Bream not 

 unfrequently attain to a weight of as much as twenty or even thirty pounds. A 

 specimen, indeed, weighing twenty-nine and a half pounds, taken in Hobson's Bay, 

 passed through the writer's hands, when making a model of it for inclusion with a 

 series of typical Victorian fish for the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition in 1888. A 

 peculiarity of the Australian Snapper, shared with some few other species of fish, is 

 the circumstance that the adult males are distinguished by the development of a large 

 bony knob in the fore part of the head, and which in vry old specimens is accom- 

 panied by a fleshy excrescence on the snout. The profile outline of these individuals 

 so strongly resembles that of a human face that they are popularly distinguished in the 

 Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide fish markets by the title of the " Old Man " 

 Snapper. As previously remarked, the Snapper taken on the Coast of Western 

 Australia presents some slight variations from that of the Southern and Eastern 

 Colonies, and it is for that reason correlated by many ichthyologists with the distinc- 

 tive title of Pagrm major. The technical differences between the two, as hitherto 

 recognised, are, however, very obscure and difficult to define. Among other points, a 

 slightly larger number of scales goes to form the lateral line in the last-named species, 

 and a greater number to the transverse series in the former. Again, whereas in Pagrus 

 unicolor the second anal spine is described as being longer but not stronger than the 

 third, in P. major the same spine is stronger but not longer than its successor. 



In connection with the considerable number of examples of the Western 

 Australian Snapper that have recently fallen within the writer's observation, a point 

 has been noted that may furnish an additional clue to the distinction of the two 

 species under discussion. It relates to the respective contours of the heads of the 

 adult males. Although extensively familiar with the typical " Old Man " individuals 

 of the Southern and Eastern Colonies, the writer has not seen among them that 

 particular modification that obtains at Fremantle, or vice versd. In these " Westralian " 

 examples there is no abnormal development of the occiput, but on the other hand the 

 nasal protuberance takes an even more exaggerated form, giving a most bibulous 

 expression to the fish's countenance. Should this recorded distinction prove to be a 



constant one, the title of the " Bottle-nosed " Snapper might be appropriately 

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