310 Records of the S.A. Museum 



Male. Head and snout dark ^reen, opercles opalescent below. Body olive 

 green above with a narrow wbitish bar across cacli ring, becoming less distinct 

 iin the tail ; bars sometimes present on the snout also. Underside of trunk dusky, 

 the sutures of the scutes darker : ventral surface of tail lighter, often with bars ■ 

 caudal ridges black. Brood pouch whitish, or pink when containing young, with 

 longitudinal black streaks. A few examples have the snout and head light brown 

 and the upper surface of the body and tail yellowish brown: numerous black 

 dots, edged with white, on the trunk where additional faint, white transverse bars 

 are often present. Underside sometimes pale without markings. 



Female, .^nout and head dusky ; opercles opalescent : body dusky olive, 

 darker abo\e. with numerous black, white-edged dots between the nape and the 

 first third of the tail: tail much lighter posteriorly. Others have the ground 

 colour light yellowish brown and some have indications of the white transverse 

 bars usually associated with the male. 



The dotted back is a fairlv coni^tant fe?ture of the female, but also, though 

 more rarely, occurs in the male : these dots are sometimes placed in regular series 

 or they may be scattered or irregular. 



Hah. New Guinea. Australia, Queensland excepted, and Tasmania. 



One of the characters of the genus Stigmatnpora is the absence of a caudal 

 fin, the tail graduallv tapering to a very fine point. It happens, however, that this 

 attenuated tail is verv rarelv preserved in its entirety and knowing that no fin is 

 developed, writers ha\e presumed their specimens to be complete and so stated 

 the caudal rings at varying figures short of the full number. The figures here 

 given are believed to represent the variations of the complete member. We have 

 examined a large number of specimens ])reserved in this r^Iuseum, including series 

 labelled .S". argiis and S. olk'aeeii.<: ; it hapi>ens that all the latter are males with 

 approximately complete tails, and this leads us to refer to the question of sexual 

 colouration. .As mentioned abo\e the markings for the sexes are not absolutely 

 constant, tending in a small proportion of examples to assume the markings of 

 both sexes in the same individual. Thus the spotted females may possess faint 

 bars, and the barred males develop' s]iots also. We have no hesitation in pro- 

 nouncing normally barred examples {S. nlivaceiis) to be males of S. argus. 

 Ogilby (10) examined two s]iecimens of the genus from South Australia preserved 

 in the Queensland Museum and identifying them with S. olirarea wrote: "The 

 species is certainlv valid." It mav be noticed that at the time, he was recording 

 an example of -S". nigra. frr)m which, of course, the .South .\ustralia.n specimens 

 are distinct. It is sufficiently significant that he did not mention 5. argus. 



(10) Ogilby, Mem. Queenl. Mus. i. 1912, p. 36. 



