FISHES—PHENOMENAL AND ECONOMICAL. 161 
Pagrus unicolor. This fine species is abundant all round the Southern Coast-line, 
extending northwards on the Eastern Coast to Mackay, in Queensland, and to 
Adelaide, in South Australia. What would appear to be a racial variety only of 
the same fish occurs also on the Coast of Western Australia, as far north as the 
Abrolhos Islands and Shark’s Bay. Adult individuals of this magnificent Bream not 
unfrequently attain to a weight of as much as twenty or even thirty pounds. A 
specimen, indeed, weighing twenty-nine and a half pounds, taken in Hobson’s Bay, 
passed through the writer’s hands, when making a model of it for inclusion with a 
series of typical Victorian fish for the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition in 1888. A 
peculiarity of the Australian Snapper, shared with some few other species of fish, is 
the circumstance that the adult males are distinguished by the development of a large 
bony knob in the fore part of the head, and which in very old specimens is accom- 
panied by a fleshy excrescence on the snout. The profile outline of these individuals 
so strongly resembles that of a human face that they are popularly distinguished in the 
Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide fish markets by the title of the “Old Man is 
Snapper. As previously remarked, the Snapper taken on the Coast of Western 
Australia presents some slight variations from that of the Southern and Eastern 
Colonies, and it is for that reason correlated by many ichthyologists with the distinc- 
tive title of Pagrus major. The technical differences between the two, as hitherto 
recognised, are, however, very obscure and difficult to define. Among other points, a 
slightly larger number of scales goes to form the lateral line in the last-named species, 
and a greater number to the transverse series in the former. Again, whereas in Pagrus 
unicolor the second anal spine is described as being longer but not stronger than the 
third, in P. major the same spine is stronger but not longer than its successor. 
In connection with the considerable number of examples of the Western 
Australian Snapper that have recently fallen within the writer’s observation, a point 
has been noted that may furnish an additional clue to the distinction of the two 
species under discussion. It relates to the respective contours of the heads of the 
adult males. Although extensively familiar with the typical “Old Man” individuals 
of the Southern and Eastern Colonies, the writer has not seen among them that 
particular modification that obtains at Fremantle, or vice versd. In these “ Westralian ” 
examples there is no abnormal development of the occiput, but on the other hand the 
nasal protuberance takes an even more exaggerated form, giving a most bibulous 
expression to the fish’s countenance. Should this recorded distinction prove to be a 
constant one, the title of the “ Bottle-nosed” Snapper might be appropriately 
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