A check-list of the fishes recorded from Australia. Part IV
Abstract
A certain amount of modification was necessary, however, before the list could be printed, and it was decided that, instead of issuing the mere list of names, references to literature should be added from the index and also an indication of the distribution of each species. This work has been ably carried out by Mr. Gilbert P. Whitley, who for some years was McCulloch's assistant, and who succeeded him as Ichthyologist to the Museum. Mr. Whitley, who has an intimate knowledge of Australian fishes, has performed this onerous task in a thoroughly conscientious manner, and the value of the Check-List has been greatly enhanced thereby.
All references to genera and species have, whenever possible, been checked by comparison with the original publication. When this has not been done. a reference is given to the authority from which the quotation is made. Prominent in this regard are Charles Davies Sherborn's Index Animalium and David Starr Jordan's Genera of Fishes, which have been of inestimable value in the compilation of this work.
After each reference to a genus the genotype is given, and after each reference to a species the type-locality appears. The designations of genotypes are as follows:...
For the sake of completeness all species recorded from Australia to the end of the year 1929 are included. By Australia is. meant all the fresh and salt waters of Queensland,.New South Wales (including the Federal Capital Territory), Victoria, South Australia, North Australia and Central Australia (formerly the Northern Territory), and Tasmania. Fishes of the Arafura Sea, New Guinea, Lord Howe Island, and New Zealand are included only when their range is known to extend into the prescribed limits. No fossils are listed, and so far as is known none of the species is extinct. The classification adopted is mainly that of David Starr Jordan's A Classification of Fishes, issued by the Leland Stanford Junior University in 1923.
