156 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
eight or nine pounds, is taken in large quantities with hook and line, and constitutes 
one of the most abundantly represented species in the Hobart fish market. As 
many as four species of the allied genus Lotella, one of which, Z. callarias, is 
the Cod of the Melbourne fishermen, and another, Z. marginata, the “ Beardie” of the 
Sydney fish market, extend as far north in their distribution as Port Jackson, in 
New South Wales. The last-named species has been also obtained by the writer in 
Tasmania. In face of these facts, the statement in Dr. Gunther's “Introduction to 
the Study of Fishes,” p. 284, that the fish fauna of Australia, as compared with 
that of New Zealand, is characterised by “an apparent total absence of all Gadoids,” 
requires modification. | 
It is a noteworthy circumstance that the rivers of Europe and North America 
yield a single fresh-water representative of the Cod family. This is the well-known 
Burbot or Eel-pout, Lota vulgaris, limited in the British islands to the streams of 
Yorkshire, Durham, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire, but is by no means 
plentiful in either of these counties. In shape and aspect the Burbot very closely 
resembles the Australian Lotelle, and grows to an attested length of over three feet, 
and a weight of from six or eight to as much as twenty pounds. In English waters, 
however, a weight of two or three pounds is the more common calibre. While 
no true fresh-water Gadoid has as yet been discovered in Australia—the so-called 
Murray Cod, as hereafter explained, being a perch—one exceedingly interesting fish 
that constitutes the sole type of a family most nearly related to the Gadide is 
abundant in certain of the rivers of Tasmania and the Southern Australian colonies. 
This is the fresh-water Black-fish, of the Australian colonists, Gadopsis marmoratus, 
an excellent table fish, which, in the Ringarooma in North Tasmania, not 
unfrequently attains to a weight of ten pounds and nearly three feet in length.* 
The general contour of the Australian Gadopsis is very much that of such 
gadoids as Phycis or Pseudophycis, and, like the former, it has filamentous, bifurcated, 
jugular fins. Owing to the fact, however, that a small portion of the membranes of 
the elongate dorsal and anal fins are supported by slender spines in place of flexible 
rays, ichthyologists have decided upon the relegation of this type to an independent 
* Dr. Gunther, Catalogue of Fishes, Vol. IV., p. 318, refers to an example of this species in the 
British Museum Collection as a fine specimen, which is only four inches in length, with the added note that 
it attains to twice these dimensions. A correct systematic record of the adult dimensions attained by the 
many species described would be a valuable addition to a subsequent edition of this Catalogue. 
