EDIBLE FISHES OF QUEENSLAND, BAFT II. — OGILBY. 
79 
Range : — Fresh waters of Tasmania and Victoria, indigene only to those 
streams which how into Bass Strait; it has, however, been successfully introduced 
in several other Tasmanian rivers, where it is now firmly established. From 
Eastern Victoria it has spread westward to the Murray and, possibly in more 
recent times, to the Onkaparinga and Torrens Rivers, the latter being, so far as is 
known, its present westerly limit. Its colonization of the eastern watersheds of 
the Murray and Darling drainage areas has been complete and successful, since 
Stead’s graphic description of its distribution in the Mother State leaves no room 
for doubt that it has established itself in all the rivers flowing westward, being, 
as he puts it, “equally common in lagunes at such widely separated places as the 
vicinity of Albury on the Murray River and Walgett, at the junction of the 
Namoi and Barwon Rivers . 5 J Beyond this it has pressed ever onward so as to 
include all that portion of Queensland drained by the Condamine, having made 
its way up that river to its head-waters in the Ranges about Warwick and 
Killarney. That it has failed to obtain a foothold in any of the New South 
Wales rivers east of the Dividing Range proves that, though sometimes taken 
in the brackish water of tidal rivers, it is incapable of existence in pure sea water. 
This brings to the front the fascinating question as to how far eastward the 
Bassian Isthmus of Early Pliocene times actually extended. ITedley/ in a 
valuable paper on “ The Effect of the Bassian Isthmus upon the existing marine 
Fauna/’ fixes the eastern border of the isthmus at or near Cape Howe. If this 
be correct we would expect to find Gadopsis still in existence in the Brodribb, 
Genoa, and other streams flowing southward into Bass Strait between the estuary 
of the Snowy and Cape Howe. But this, so far as we know, is not the case. 
There seems, therefore, to be some ground for query as to whether it might not 
be safer to place the boundary of the lost isthmus somewhere in the neighbourhood 
of Cape Conran than further east. Next comes the question of the peopling of 
the western waters. The means whereby this was effected is possibly to be found 
in the one-time capture of the head waters of the Snowy River by the Murrum- 
bidgee, -and the consequent transference of an eastern fauna into a western 
river, whence it has spread in all directions. Unlike the Murray Cod ( Oligorus 
macquariensis ) , Golden Perch ( Pleclroplitcs anibiguus), or Snubnose Perch 
( Macquaria aust ralasica ) , all three of which have crossed the Range at one or 
more points, the Slippery has not succeeded in so doing, and is, therefore, in 
these systems antithetical to the Eel ( Anguilla reinhardtii ) , which as persistently 
refuses to cross to the western slopes, notwithstanding its known ability to travel 
long distances at night through damp grass. This is the more astonishing as the 
western- flowing Cudgegong and the eastern-flowing Goulburn ( ?) practically 
arise from the same source, but while in the eelless Cudgegong the Slippery is 
so common as to have gained the distinctive local appellation of “tailor,” it 
Proc. Linn. Soe. N. S. Wales, xxviii., pp. 876 to 883. 
