24 



they evidently had not come up the bore from underground 

 waters. On my pointing this out and asking for further par- 

 ticulars, Professor Wood Jones wrote: — "Now I have asked 

 everyone who knows, and I am assured that all the water is 

 bore water pure and simple. . At Hergott there are natural 

 springs — that is why the place sprang into existence. I have 

 never seen the springs; they are some three miles away from 

 the place where the bore was sunk. . . . The bore is 

 just on the desert — the water flows on the desert where pre- 

 viously no water was (there is no old watercourse into which 

 the bore water has found its way, as at Clayton and Dul- 

 canina)." It is no wonder, therefore, that it is the popular 

 belief that the animals came up the bore, for this is, as 

 Professor Wood Jones says, "the local story of all bore-water 

 fauna." He adds that it is curious that though every party 

 that has gone into the centre of Australia has based on 

 Hergott, no one has noticed or collected the Isopod, although 

 the hot water of the bore is full of them. When he was there 

 they were in countless numbers, all swimming against the 

 hot current. He did not take the temperature of the water, 

 but says, "It is very hot; steam arising from it." 



Like other Isopods, the Phreatoicus carries its eggs in a 

 brood pouch underneath the body till the young are 

 hatched out and, probably, for some time longer, the young 

 then being similar in form to the adults. It is, therefore, a 

 little difficult to see how they have got from the spring, or 

 other natural water from which they must have come, to the 

 bore water in which they exist in such numbers. It is, of 

 course, possible that when the natural water dries up they 

 become encased in the dried-up mud, retaining the power 

 of vitality and resuming activity as soon as the water reappears, 

 but that does not explain how they have got from the natural 

 springs, situated near Marree, to the bore water, three miles 

 distant. It is, however, clear that they must be widely dis- 

 tributed and abundant in springs and natural waters in the 

 district, for Professor Wood Jones, in a letter dated October 

 5, 1921, states that in a recent trip lie collected specimens 

 from the mound springs, near Coward, just to the westward 

 of Lake Eyre south. There are, he says, many of these 

 springs, and they vary greatly in salinity and temperature, 

 but the animal was found in all the springs, from Bullakaninna 

 to Coward, an area of some 30 miles. 



In this connection it is worthy of note that another mem- 

 ber of the family, Phreatoicopsis terricola, Spencer and Hall, 

 was found in burrows on the banks of the IJpper Gellibrand 

 River (Spencer and Hall, 1896, p. 13). This species has since 

 been recorded from the Otway forest; from Mount William, 



