Dr. A. Giinther on Australian Fishes. 237 prevented me from adopting Professor Owen's view as to the generic affinity of this fish, which I thought, in the absence of specimens preserved entire, would prove to be rather with the Murray cod, OUgoms ; and thus the fish appeared in nearly all subsequent publications as OUgoms gigas. Cas-telnau, however ('Notes on the Edible Fishes of Victoria,' 1873, p. 8, and Proc. Zool. Soc. Vict. ii. 1873, p. 151), pro-posed to form a new genus for it, Hectoria^ " on account of its armed tongue, double-pointed operculum, &c." In more recent years the same fish has been found far from the place of its first discovery, viz. off the island of Juan Fer-nandez, and described by Steindachner as Polyprion Kneri (Sitzungsb, Wien. Acad. Ixxi. p. 443) ; also the ' Challenger ' obtained it off the same island (Chall. Shore Fish. p. 24). Finally, the British Museum obtained from the Fisheries and Indo-Colonial Exhibitions specimens (in spirit as well as mounted) from New Zealand and Juan Fernandez * ; and a direct comparison of these specimens can leave no doubt that all belong to the same species, which is antipodal to the only other species known, Polyprion cernium. Lowe (Fish. Madeira, p. 185) has shown that P. cernium is a deep-sea fish, swimming near the surface when young, but living habitually at a depth of 300 and more fathoms when adult. The wide range of this genus is therefore not surprising ; in fact we may well expect that P. cernium will be met with far beyond the limits of the north-eastern Atlantic. XXVII. — On Australian Fishes of the Genus Beryx. By Dr. A. Gunthee, F.R.S. The British Museum has recently acquired, in a collection of fish from Adelaide, a fine specimen of Beryx^ which, although closely allied to Beryx affinis, is clearly specifically distinct from it, differing somewhat in the fin-formula, in the size of the scales, and especially in the form of the nostrils and the sculpture of the opercles and of the upperside of the head. It may be named * Those exhibited by the Chilian Government, and presented bv them to the British Museum, bore the MS. name "Percafernandexia7ia.
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