FISHES—PHENOMENAL AND ECONOMICAL, 159 
years hence, increase to such an extent as to be available as a food supply. The 
‘fish transported, numbering several hundred, averaged from a quarter to half a pound 
in weight. After porterage by train from Morgan, on the Murray river, to Adelaide, 
they were there stored for a while in a pond in the Botanic Gardens of that 
city. Thence they were shipped in batches by the Orient and P. and O. mail steamers 
to Albany, a distance of over one thousand miles, and from there conveyed by rail 
again to their ultimate destinations. The majority of the fish were liberated in the 
waters of the Upper Swan or Avon, in the neighbourhoods of York and Beverley 
and the residue were turned into a lake, receiving constant accessions of fresh water, 
some ten miles out of Albany. It will be interesting to note the results of these 
acclimatisation processes a few years hence, and should the fish have commenced to 
multiply, steps should be taken to distribute them to other waters suitable for their 
reception, where their presence will be of public utility. A year previously (1893) a 
small tentative consignment of the Murray river Golden Perch, Ctenolates ambiguus, 
and also the Victorian Silver Eel, Anguilla australis, was transported by the writer 
vid Adelaide to the Upper Swan river, and according to latest accounts are doing 
well there. The last-named type has, in fact, already commenced to multiply. 
Before dismissing the subject of the Murray Cod, it is worthy of record that 
several huge members of the same genus, Oligorus, frequent the Australian sea coasts 
and estuaries, being most abundantly represented among the coral reefs and in the 
estuaries of the tropical districts. One of the best known of these species, Oligorus 
gigas, first reported from New Zealand, attains to a weight of three or four hundred- 
weight. Two distinct species, 0. Goliath and O. terra-regine from Queensland and other 
North Australian waters, rival it in dimensions. The popular title attached to these 
huge fish in Australia is that of Gropers, a name, however, which must not be 
confused with the several varieties of fish, Cossyphus, Chironemus and Chilodactylus, 
locally bearing the same name, which belong to the southern or temperate Australian 
waters. The so-called Rock Cods, including the allied genera, Serranus and Plectropoma, 
are additional representatives of the Perch family, which enter very extensively into 
the commercially important fish fauna of Australia, being especially abundant, in both 
numbers and varieties, in the sub-tropical and tropical districts. Many of these fish 
are remarkable for their brilliant colouration, being variously ornamented with stripes 
or bars or spots. In one especially handsome species, Plectropoma Richardsoni, not 
unfrequently exposed for sale in the Fremantle fish market, Western Australia, the 
ground colour of the body is a most brilliant carmine with a tendency to yellow 
