Note on a Species of Therapon found in a dam at Warialda.
A paper by William MacLeay (not reproduced), with remarks by Rev. J. E. Tenison Woods.
The Rev. J. E. Tenison-Woods observed that the sudden appearance of fish in surface water derived from rain was a matter well worth the attention of naturalists. In the south eastern district of S. Australia there is a small fish named lap-lap by the natives, which does not appear to have been described. It abounds in the swamps of that extensive district, where there are no watercourses properly speaking, but where the swamps drain from one to another in very wet seasons as the country is a dead level and in no place more than 300 feet above the sea. In this district there are extensive tracts of desert, with here and there grassy patches and swamps of water to which the sheep are taken to depasture in the winter. In summer these swamps are dried and the sheep are withdrawn to the home stations often 20 to 40 miles away. He remembered in 1861 having crossed one of the desert places with a companion at the close of summer. They had ventured to make a short cut overland by the aid of some very heavy rains which had fallen during the same week. In crossing by an
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abandoned hut where there was an extensive system of troughs by the side of a swamp, they found the troughs one-third full and literally swarming with lap-lap fish about an inch or an inch and a half in length. The troughs had not probably been used for two or three months previously, and they could hardly doubt that they had been filled by the rain for there were no traces of any sheep having been there recently or of any visitors at all. He supposed that the ova of this fish would bear desiccation without perishing and that they had remained in the troughs until hatched by the rain. He had often observed also that when the immense flats of the Mosquito Plains, and the Muddy Creek heaths were inundated in winter, that dray tracks or any little indentation of the surface would become a channel along which the water slowly ran. These were always stocked with lap-lap, though in this case of course the ova or fry may have come from the swamps. He had come to the conclusion that the ova of these fishes would bear desiccation without perishing, and that they were often blown about and carried considerable distances by the wind, in dust storms, &c.