309 



THE FISHES OF AUSTRALIA. 



BY FREDERICK M'COY, 



Professor of Science in the University of Melbourne, and Director of the Natural 

 Museum of Victoria, &c. 



In the class of fishes of Victoria, many species remain yet to be de- 

 termined. The more important fishes used as food are the " Schnapper," 

 of colonists, Pagrus unicolor, abundant, and often of great size, with large 

 numbers of which the market is regularly supplied, and which is caught 

 and dried in great quantities by the Chinese fishermen in Hobson's Bay, 

 and supplied to their countrymen or the various gold-fields. The next most 

 important species, from its being almost equally abundant at times in the. 

 market, and of equally large size and superior flavour, is the great Cod 

 Perch, the " Murray Cod " of colonists, the Grystes Peeli of Mitchell, or 

 Oligorus Macquariensis of modern writers. A very much larger (occasion- 

 ally five feet in length), and finer fish for table, only an occasional visitor, 

 however, is the " King fish ' ' of colonists, which seems to me completely 

 identical with the great " rnaigre " of the Mediterranean (Scincea aquila). 

 Dr. Gunther, the most recent European writer on Ichthyology, in his general 

 catalogue of Acanthoptarygian Fishes, states that the family Scicenidce, to 

 which this fish belongs, has never been found in Australia. The fishes, 

 commonly called "Mullet," (Dajanus Diemensis), and "Whiting," by the 

 colonists (Sillago punctata), are common in the fish-shops for the table, 

 together with three species of flathead (Platycephalus nematophthalmus f 

 P. tasmanius, and P. laivigatus), which are caught abundantly in the Bay at all 

 times. Another tolerably good table fish is known to the colonists, and is 

 found in the market under the name of " Pike," though, like all other fishes 

 bearing the names of English species, it has little resemblance and no affi- 

 nity to the fish of that name in Europe, it is the Sphyrama obtusata and 

 S. Novai Hollandioe. The so-called " herring " of the fishermen, is the 

 Centropristis Georgianus, with which the market is also abundantly supplied. 

 The " Barracoota" which visits us regularly, and is in some request for the 

 table, is certainly the Cape of Good Hope Thyrsites atun. The small ling 

 (the Lota brevinscula) is occasionally procured for food on the coast, but is 

 chiefly remarkable for the old full-grown fish (about a foot long), having 

 two or three years ago been stated by some fishermen to be the young of 

 the great Newfoundland cod ; it was in vain that I pointed out the generic 

 difference in the number of the fins, &c, and that these supposed young 

 were adult ; the practical men carried conviction so far with them that the 

 merchants of the town subscribed some hundreds of pounds, twice, to fit 

 out a vessel to commence a great cod-fishing, on a supposed cod-bank, a few 

 miles out, as a mercantile speculation. The Dory (Zeus fdber) is a rare 

 visitant, and whether as delicious here as in Europe, I cannot say, although 

 a party of my scientific friends actually ate one of the three specimens I 

 known to have occurred during the seventh year I have been in the. 



