108 NEW SOUTH WALES 
Centropogon robustus, Giinth., is in all our eastern rivers. It belongs 
to the Scorpenide family, and a genus which is distinguished by having 
no groove on the occiput, no pectoral appendages and no cleft behind 
the fourth gill. The species is a small brownish fish, marbled with 
black. Its scales are small, and the fourth and fifth dorsals are the 
longest. None of these three fishes are of any commercial importance 
whatever. It has already been shown what peculiarities this fish has 
under the name of the “ Bull-rout.” 
GALAXIADZ. 
In the upper and shallower parts of the creeks and rivers rising 
in the Blue Mountains one or two species of Galawias are found. 
They are cylindrical fishes of 8 or 10 inches in length, and without scales, 
inhabiting only the colder rivers of the Southern Pacific. They are 
probably’good for the table, but they are rare and for the most part 
small, They are known to some as the “Mountain trout.” In 
describing a new species from Mt. Kosciusko, G. findlayi, the Hon. W. 
Macleay makes the following remarks (Proceed. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., 
vol. 7,'p. 106) :—“I received from Baron von Mueller, a few days ago, 
two specimens of a small fish which inhabits the icy pools of the snowy 
range in the neighbourhood of Mt. Kosciusko. The Baron writes as 
follows :—‘I saw the same little creature in several of the waters high 
up in the Alps, during my exploration of the Snowy Mountains in 
1853-4, and 1855, and again in later years when travelling, but I was 
in the then pathless alpine regions, unable to preserve zoological 
specimens. When in 1874, I for the second time ascended Mt. 
Kosciusko, I saw this species of fish again in the little glacier ponds, 
but missed catching any, my time being so much occupied, during my 
brief stay on the snowy summit, in the pursuit of plants.’ The two 
specimens now to be described were captured by 8. Findlay on Mt. 
Kosciusko. They are both small, the largest not exceeding 3 inches, and 
evidently immature.” Macleay then refers to a former paper read before 
the same Society (vol. 5, p. 45), describing another species of that genus,. 
from the head waters of the Colo River at Mount Wilson, and he pointed 
out the probability of fishes of this kind being abundant, and of con- 
siderable size in the cold snowy streams of the Australian Alps. He 
remarked in the same paper that though such fishes were found in the 
upper tributaries of the Grose, at heights of two or three thousand feet, 
none were found in-the Nepean and Hawkesbury, into which these 
streams flowed. The author attributed this not so much to the falls as 
to the difference of temperature, and mentioned that its distribution 
showed it to be essentially a cold-water fish. The family is a remark- 
able one, containing ‘only two genera, Galawias and Neochanna. Both 
are small fresh-water fishes, only found in the Southern Hemisphere. 
Neochanna is a remarkable mudfish of New Zealand, which is caught 
in burrows which it excavates in clay or consolidated mud, at a distance 
from the water. It is, says Dr. Giinther, a degraded form of Galawias,. 
from which it only differs by the absence of ventral tins, These fish 
have no scales or barbels, they have a thick lip, and the ova fall into the 
cavity of the abdomen before exclusion. Altogether the family is a 
most isolated one, having no relationship with any other. ‘The species 
