A NEW FISH, REPUTED TO BE POISONOUS, FROM QUEENSLAND. 175 
A NEW FISH, REPUTED TO BE POISONOUS, 
FROM QUEENSLAND. 
By Gilbert Whitley, Ichthyologist, The Australian Museum, Sydney.* 
(Plate XXVI ; Text-Figure 1.) 
There are few Australian fishes which, when eaten fresh, are poisonous 
as food. Toadfishes of the family Tetraodontidse and Porcupine Fishes are 
well known as poisonous fishes so that nowadays few persons try to eat them, 
but there are other fishes, allied to the Hussars (family Lutjanidse), the 
Snappers of our tropical waters, whose flesh is at times edible and at other 
times very poisonous. 
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Spanish navigator, 
Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, remarked on poisonous Sparoid fishes of the 
Pacific * 1 allied to the European Pagrus. Many years later, the naturalists on 
Cook’s voyages, George Forster 2 and William Anderson 3 also encountered these 
deceptive fishes, whilst Cook himself was severely poisoned through eating a 
toadfish in New Caledonia in 1774. 
The Chinaman Fish of North Queensland, whose flesh, at certain 
unexplained periods, is poisonous, was earlier described in these Memoirs 4 , 
where it was named as a new genus and species, Paradicichthys venenatus. An 
account of its skull was later prepared by Dr. H. L. Kesteven, but this has 
not yet been published. Now, a second reputedly poisonous fish has been 
forwarded to me from Helix Reef, off Townsville, by the Queensland Museum, 
for identification and report. This is a species of Hussar or Sea Perch, known 
as the Red Bass, which, according to its donor, Mr. George Coates, <£ has the 
reputation of producing a form of muscular paralysis of a rather severe nature.” 
Mr. Coates also remarks that “ others of the same kind together with Chinaman 
fish have at various times been displayed for sale in the local fish shops.” 
This fish is quite different from the Chinaman Fish (which has the soft dorsal 
*( Contribution from The Australian Museum.) 
1 G. A. Wood, Discov. Austr. 1922, p. 470 and Stevens, New Light Discov. Austr. 
1930, p. 127. 
2 Forster, Obs. Voy. World, 1778, pp. 201 and 642; Descr. Anim. (ed. Lichtenstein), 
1844, pp. 254 and 282. 
3 W. Anderson, Account Poisonous Fish, a letter dated 23 April 1776; also Cook, 
Voy. S. Pole, ed. 3, ii, 1779, p. 112. 
4 Whitley, Mem. Qld. Mus. X, 1930, p. 13, pi. i, fig. 1. See also The Australian 
Museum Magazine, iv, 1932, p. 394, where Dr f\ S- Clarke’s notes, from the medical viewpoint, 
are reproduced. 
