CONTRIBUTION 
TO THE 
ICHTHYOLOGY OF AUSTRALIA. 
BT 
COUNT F. DE CASTELNAU. 
No. I.— THE MBLBOUENE FISH MAEKET. 
Mt intention is, if circumstances allow me, to submit to tbe 
public a succession of papers on the fishes of Australia, This 
first one is devoted to the description of the different sorts I 
have observed at Melbourne, alive or in a fresh state, during more 
than a year, and which almost all come from the Fish Market. 
The number of sorts (142) is very limited, compared with what 
could be collected during the same period in other countries, 
such as India or South America ; but, if many of the South 
Australian forms indicate their habitat in a semi-tropical climate, 
the diversity of species is not so great as in most regions equally 
situated. This seems to be the rule with the Antarctic Seas, as 
at the Cape of Good Hope, after several years’ researches, 1 
could only obtain 157 sorts (-with ossified skeletons or Teleostei, 
Gunther), many of which came from distant parts, such as Lake 
N ’garni. Natal, &c. Since then, many sorts have been indicated 
as from South Africa, and their number is so considerable in the 
Catalogues of the British Museum as to make me, in many cases, 
doubt of the exactness of the assigned locality. All the fishes of 
Sir A. Smith’s collection have been inscribed as coming from the 
Cape sea, while I believe that many were obtained at very distant 
