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RAY'S BREAM AND ITS ALLIES IN AUSTRALIA.
By Gilbert Whitley.
(Plate xix.)
{Contribution from the Australian Museum.)
The finding of Ray's Bream, a fish usually called Brama rail, in any
part of the world is always noteworthy, as this interesting species is of
sporadic occurrence. The type-specimen was found in England in 1681 and
named after John Ray, the famous naturalist of the time. In the in-
tervening two and a half centuries, numbers of this fish have been re-
corded, but it is still regarded as a rarity. Apart from the typical Old
World form, several allied species have been described, but we have still
much to learn regarding the growth-stages and the limits of variation
in these fishes. Their taxonomy is consequently tangled, as I found when
identifying a new species recently caught in New South Wales, so that
a brief review of the family nomenclature is necessary. The Pomfret,
Ray's Bream, or Castagnole, as it is called, belongs to the Series Brami-
formes of Jordan's Classification of Fishes, 1923, p. 181, and the family
Lepidotidae of F. de Buen, 1935 {Bramidae, olim.) . This family embraces
only a few genera or subgenera, to which a tentative key is here offered:
BioStor
