NEW ZEALAND MUD-FISH.

West Coast Times, Issue 2264, 11 March 1876, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND MUD-FISH.

The following correspondence on the subject of these curious fish appears in Land and Water : —

I have received the following :— " May I ask the favor of you to inform me in what publication I can find some scientific notice of a fish, of which you will find annexed a copy of some particulars received with it from i?"ew Zealand. I possess two of these fish preserved in spirits of wine, and shall be happy to sell you one of them if of any interest to you. ' 1 gave one to the director of our lppal , museum, who asks me for some further; information, and without your kind assistance I am unable to furnigh him with an y« Extract of a letter dated Hokitika, New Zealand, June 3, 1869, from Mr W. C. Roberts, manager of the Bank of New, Zealand there: — 'They were dug out of stiff clay on a terrace some fifty feat above the sea level, were found alive (I have kept them for several weeks alive in water slightly muddy) with the clay bearing: the' impress of the fish.' The place where foundi had beep (as indeed is the case all over the coast) densely timbered, and the soil a description of swamp, that is to say, holding a large quantity of water, and muddy, full of decaying vegetable matter. I have this," moment had one presented to me in a bottle of water, quite lively, just dug ous of the land bordering on the river, but some thirty feet above it, in ground quite recently heavily timbered, but now cleared, out of stiff but slightly moist blue clay some eighteen "inches from the surface. The impression of the fisfi was quite clearly marked in the clay. In this case the fish must have been in the posi T tioa it waa found for a very considerable time.— Chakles Seidleb." This is, without doubt, the Lepidopsiren protopterus anectens. The Rev J. Wood, in his "Natural History," figures it, and des. cnbea its habits and its mud cocoon. A specimen from Africa was presented to thl Royal College of Surgeons, in June! 1837 *; this was most accurately described by Professor Owen in the "Linnseah Transactions, in vol. 18, part 2, p. 327. if our correspondent will kindly present me with one of his New Zealand specimens, I wilj figure and describe it in this paper.— Feank Bbckland.

In Land and Water of Dec. 4th, there appears the following letter from Mr Henry Lee, of Brighton:— Mr Seidler. whose letter requesting information con T cerning the mud -fish of New Zealand, was quoted by Mr Buckland last week, will find that in your paper of August 20, 1870, I described two specimens which had been placed temporarily in my hands by Sir Henry W, Peek. I thidk they must be the very same specimens referred to by Mr Buckland, for I find that 1 then published the letter he quotes from Hokir tika. The fish is Neochanna apoda, not Lepidosiren, or Protoptertis anectans. It waa scientifically deicribed by Dr Gunther in the "Aanals aad Magazine of

Natural History"— I think id l§g?, gig remarks on this curious fish v»d its fiabi^s are embodied in my article abore mentioned.