456 Bibliographical Notice. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 



A Naturalist in Tasmania. By Geoffeez Smith, M.A. 

 Oxford : The Clarendon Press. 1909. 



Mb. Geoffeet Smith, a Fellow of New College, Oxford, in this 

 most delightful book has set down the results of a six-months' 

 survej' of Tasmania, carried out during the spring and summer of 

 1907-8. The expedition was undertaken at the suggestion of 

 Prof. G. C, Bourne, the Linacro Professor of Comparative Anatomy 

 at Oxford, and the aim thereof was to survey the freshwater fauna 

 of Tasmania. The Author has done this, and much more, and 

 in these pages the results of his trip are set forth after a most 

 charming and lively fashion. 



A fortnight was spent in dredging work on the Great Lake and 

 incursions into the surrounding bu3h. This lake has earned a 

 considerable reputation among fishermen for the size and number 

 of the trout which it contains ; and this is not surprising; for these 

 trout are giants, scaling 25 pounds. They are, the Author remarks, 

 the " ordinary English Brown Trout," introduced in 1864, which, 

 by dint of good living and freedom from enemies, have nothing to 

 do but wax and grow fat — which they do, having a superabundance 

 of ground food in the shape of small Crustacea. But this diet can 

 be varied at will, since the lake abounds with two species of native 

 trout belonging to the genus Gala.vias, which, swimming in large 

 shoals, afford an easy prey to the alien race. 



Of the Crustacea Mr. Geoffrey Smith had the good fortune to 

 find a new form of the very remarkable ground-shrimp (Anaspides 

 tasmanice), common at a high elevation on Mount "Wellington and 

 in clear tarns on Mount Field and the Harz Mountains. This new 

 form, to which he has given the name Puranasjndes lacustris, differs 

 conspicuously from the typical Anaspides^ and appears to be more of 

 a free-swimming type and confined to the Great Lake. Here also 

 he found several species of the peculiar Crustacean genus Phreatoicus. 

 Several distinct species of the genus occur here and in great abun- 

 dance. This genus is " confined to the alpine regions of Southern 

 Australia and New Zealand." These two genera, it would seem, 

 stand in the same relation to other Crustacea " as the Platypus does 

 to ordinary Mammals." 



Of the Giant Crayfish (Astacopsis franhlinii), the largest fresh- 

 Avater crayfish in the world, some interesting facts are given here. 

 All the specimens he found were " smothered with a parasitic ^2Lt- 

 woTm{Temnocep7iaia) about a quarter of an inch long," and crowded 

 together " in such numbers as to appear like a green foam covering 

 the animal." 



Of the larger and more interesting mammals, the Thylacine and 

 the Dasyure, he has much to say that is worth reading, if not new. 

 The Thylacine, at any rate, appears to be on the verge of extinction. 



But as to these, and much more, we must refer the reader to the 

 book itself, which is in every way a most entrancing volume. 



W. P. P. 



