164 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



presence in many other unrelated species of fish. It was also observed by the 

 writer that a very large number of sea fish exhibited these cross-bands constantly 

 when in their young condition, though they gradually lose them, except in a 

 latent state, as they attain maturity. These several facts all seem to favour the 

 assumption that these cross-bands represent the residual traces of what constituted 

 a conspicuous and permanent character in their ancestral forms. The familiar 

 "parr" markings of the young of the majority, if not all, of the known Salmonidce, 

 appear in a similar manner to indicate that their ancestral archetypes were 

 likewise permanently cross-barred. This subject was dealt with at some length in 

 a paper communicated by the writer to the Hobart, 1892, Meeting of the Australian 

 Association for the Advancement of Science. It is one worthy of further investi- 

 gation and of discussion in a future edition of such a work as Mr. F. Beddard's 

 interesting and instructive book on "Animal Coloration." 



A fair idea of the general contour of the form and distribution of the colour 

 markings of the Hobart Trumpeter will be afforded by a reference to Plate XXVIII., 

 in which are depicted the photographic presentments of some two dozen species of 

 Tasmanian sea fishes taken from a series of coloured plaster casts executed by the 

 writer a few years since, which were presented by him to the Tasmanian Museum. 

 The species under notice, Latris hecateia, is represented by two figures in this Plate, 

 the one of a small example occupying the first place to the left of the third row 

 in the series from the top, and that of a larger individual, which in life measured 

 two feet and weighed eight or ten pounds, being situated to the extreme right in 

 the second row below it. 



The special facilities with which fish lend themselves to reproduction in Plaster 

 of Paris was first recognised by the late Mr. Frank Buckland, whose personally 

 executed casts of British fish, and notably Salmonidse, on exhibition in the Buckland 

 Museum, South Kensington, constitute probably the most extensive series of such 

 models that has been brought together. Many of these plaster casts have been 

 coloured from life by the late noted fish artist, Mr. H. L. Eolfe, " the Landseer among 

 fishes," as he was justly and familiarly styled, and supply a far truer presentment of 

 the living originals than is obtainable from the most carefully preserved specimens in 

 which the softer parts become invariably more or less shrunk or otherwise distorted, 

 and the natural colours completely obliterated. Similar, but yet more artistically 

 finished, life-coloured models of various of the softer skinned lizards and snakes 

 have been recently executed with great success under the auspices of the United 



