222 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Mar., 1898. 
Pisciculture. 
THE BARRAMUNDI. 
Mr. G. L. Pinciter, Rockhampton, writes as follows on the barramundi, illus- 
trated in the Jowrnal of 1st January :—In the January number, 1898, of the 
Queensland Agricultural Journal, Mr. D. O’Connor recommends the acclimati- 
sation of the Hitzroy barramundi in the Brisbane River, but I am afraid that 
Nature herself interposes some unascertained obstacle to the permanent success 
of the project. In 1872, the late Mr. John Jardine and myself sent some 
barramundi and other fish preserved in spirits to the Acclimatisation Society, 
which, together with some accompanying notes, were forwarded by them to Mr. 
Daintree, for the British Museum. 
Dr. Giinther, in acknowledging their arrival, wrote to Mr. Daintree as 
follows :— The large specimen and three smaller ones, called the perch of the 
Fitzroy River, are properly referred by Mr. Jardine to the genus Lates. They are 
Lates calcarifer, a fish hitherto well known from the coast and fresh waters of the 
India and East India Archipelago. It is much esteemed in India for the table, 
and Hamilton states that specimens 5 feet long are not rare in the Ganges. 
You see this fish has a wide distribution, and I was so much surprised at its 
occurrence in Queensland, when I received the first specimens from the Fitzroy 
River in 1870, that I published a notice of it in the proceedings of the 
Zoological Society, 9th December, 1870. I know specimens of this fish from 
India, Java, Madura, Banca; Borneo, and Celebes. TI shall place the large 
specimen in one of the public galleries of the British Museum; a smaller one 
will be made into a skeleton, and the other two I intend to transfer to other 
museums, as we possess already similar specimens. P.S.—I have given one 
specimen of the Fitzroy perch to the Oxford Museum, as a gift of the Queens- 
land Acclimatisation Society.” 
From Dr, Giinther’s account it appears that few fishes have so wide a 
tropical distribution as Dates calcarifer, and, as they are found on the sea coast, 
in the tidal rivers, and the lagoons connected with them, there must be some 
natural cause which prohibits them from finding their way into the Brisbane 
River. I believe that they are found as far south as Bundaberg, but not 
lower, so that.the temperature of the water may be the reason of their not 
being found as far sitet as Brisbane. I may here mention in connection with 
this idea that one of the most puzzling problems in connection with the 
barramundi is that in the Fitzroy it is never found in roe, and that no one 
has an idea as to where it spawns, whether in the sea, the river, or the lagoons, 
A fisherman named Hall, a most reliable and intelligent observer, who made 
_ his living for many years by catching fish in the Fitzroy, told me that, of the 
thousands he had taken, he had only known of two or three instances of it 
being taken with a roe; he described the roe as being large, shaped like “a pair 
of breeches,” and as fine as a cod’s roe (European). Now, how is this sterility 
of the barramundi in the Fitzroy waters to be accounted for ? My own idea, 
which I only venture to put forward for consideration, is that the temperature 
of the water about the latitude of Rockhampton (23 degrees 24 minutes) is 
not sufliciently high to induce the fish to breed, though in other respects they 
can thrive well enough in it, and that their spawning grounds will be found 
somewhat farther North, where the temperature is higher during the breeding 
season, From Dr. Giinther’s list of habitats it appears to be a strictly 
intertropical fish ; its northern boundaries being Calcutta and China, limits of 
