Ill THE LAKE DISTRICT 79 



Great Lake would naturally arouse the curiosity 

 of a naturalist to inquire into any peculiar con- 

 ditions of the lake which might favour their 

 growth, and I am certainly disposed to find an 

 answer to this problem in the extraordinary rich- 

 ness of the invertebrate fauna of the lake, which 

 is quite unlike anything we are accustomed to 

 find in the lakes of northern Europe. The only 

 native fish in the Great Lake are, I believe, two 

 species of Galaxias, or native Trout, a genus re- 

 motely connected with our northern Pike and charac- 

 teristic of the southern hemisphere, being found in 

 the temperate fresh and brackish waters of Tasma- 

 nia, New Zealand, South Africa, and South America. 

 Besides the common spotted Galaxias truttaceus 

 (Fig 26, p. 106), which is also common in almost 

 all the creeks ^ throughout Tasmania, there is, in 

 the Lake District only, an unspotted species, G. an- 

 ratus, with golden blotches on its silvery rather 

 transparent body, which may grow to about ten 

 inches in length. Large shoals of these little 

 Galaxias may be seen in the shallow waters of 

 the Great Lake, and there can be little doubt that 

 they form an important article of diet for the 

 large English Trout. Besides the purely fresh- 

 water G, truttaceus and auratus, there is an un- 

 spotted brackish- water form {G. attenuatus) (Fig. 

 27, p. 106), which is found at the mouths of the 

 rivers, and ascends some way into pure fresh 



1 The term ' creek ' in Australian parlance is applied to any 

 small freshwater stream, and not to an inlet of the sea. 



