164 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
presence in many other unrelated species of fish. It was also observed by the 
writer that a very large number of sea fish exhibited these cross-bands constantly 
when in their young condition, though they gradually lose them, except in a 
latent state, as they attain maturity. These several facts all seem to favour the 
assumption. that these cross-bands represent the residual traces of what constituted 
a conspicuous and permanent character in their ancestral forms. The familiar 
“parr” markings of the young of the majority, if not all, of the known Salmonide, 
appear in a similar manner to indicate that their ancestral archetypes were 
likewise permanently cross-barred. This subject was dealt with at some length in 
a paper communicated by the writer to the Hobart, 1892, Meeting of the Australian 
Association for the Advancement of Science. It is one worthy of further investi- 
gation and of discussion in a future edition of such a work as Mr. F. Beddard’s 
interesting and instructive book on “ Animal Coloration.” 
A fair idea of the general contour of the form and distribution of the colour 
markings of the Hobart Trumpeter will be afforded by a reference to Plate XXVIII, 
in which are depicted the photographic presentments of some two dozen species of 
Tasmanian sea fishes taken from a series of coloured plaster casts executed by the 
writer a few years since, which were presented by him to the Tasmanian Museum. 
The species under notice, Latris hecateia, is represented by two figures in this Plate, 
the one of a small example occupying the first place to the left of the third row 
in the series from the top, and that of a larger individual, which in life measured 
two feet and weighed eight or ten pounds, being situated to the extreme right in 
the second row below it. 
The special facilities with which fish lend themselves to reproduction ‘in Plaster 
of Paris was first recognised by the late Mr. Frank Buckland, whose personally 
executed casts of British fish, and notably Salmonide, on exhibition in the Buckland 
Museum, South Kensington, constitute probably the most extensive series of such 
models that has been brought together. Many of these plaster casts have been 
coloured from life by the late noted fish artist, Mr. H. L. Rolfe, “the Landseer among 
fishes,” as he was justly and familiarly styled, and supply a far truer presentment of 
the living originals than is obtainable from the most carefully preserved specimens in 
which the softer parts become invariably more or less shrunk or otherwise distorted, 
and the natural colours completely obliterated. Similar, but yet more artistically 
finished, life-coloured models of various of the softer skinned lizards and snakes 
have been recently executed with great success under the auspices of the United 
