302 descmptiye catalogue of australiax fishes, Descriptive Catalogue of the Fishes of Australia. By William Macleay, F.L.S., &c Part I. The following Catalogue is compiled with the view of obviating or lessening the difficulty which the student of Ichthyology in this Country has to encounter from having to refer for the history and identification of the species, to numberless publications in a variety of languages, which ar^ only to be found in very large and well-stocked libraries. Up to a certain period Dr. Gunther's Catalogue of the Fishes of the British Museum met this difficulty, but the vast additions which have been made to the fauna of Australia since the date of that publication has made it almost obsolete as a record of Australian Fishes. This may be inferred from the fact that while the number of Acanthopteryginous Fishes given as Australian in Dr. Grunther's Catalogue does not exceed 210, the number recorded in the Catalogue of which I now lay before you the first part, comes up to 650 species. The classification I have adopted is entirely that of Dr. (jriinther, and I have never departed from his nomenclature, excepting in a very few and easily explained instances. The descriptions given of the genera and species are also, wherever available, taken from Dr. Grunther, as being more terse and to the point than those of most authors, and in every case I have been as brief as possible, so as to keep the Catalogue within the smallest limits. For the same reason I have not given, except in rare instances, the synonyms of the species, and I have confined the references to one or two of the most useful and best known. No descrii3tion is given with those species which have been previously described in the Proceedings of this Society. Under each genus I state its general geographical range ; and under the species its Australian habitat. The term Australian includes all seas from the South Coast of New Guinea to the
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