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Rh Collins says he saw the natives fishing with the hook and line in New South Wales. The women, he says, used the hook and liueline [sic]. The lines were made of the bark of a small tree, and the hooks of the mother-of-pearl oyster, which they rubbed on a stone until it assumed the shape desired. "While fishing, the women sing. In their canoes they always carry a small fire laid upon sea-weed or sand, with which, when desirous of eating, they dress their meal."

The hook, probably, travelled slowly southwards, along the eastern seaboard, and had not reached the Lower Murray at the time the whites settled there. Negative evidence on such a matter is not, however, of much value.

The fish-hooks figured in M. Péron's work (1800-1804) are exactly similar to those of Gippsland and Rockingham Bay; and I think it may be safely assumed that the invention of the shell-hook is native.

Amongst the fish commonly taken by the blacks are the Murray cod (Oligorus Macquariensis), which is often three feet in length and very heavy; the bream (Chrysophrys Australis); the schnapper (Pagrus unicolor); the herring (Prototroctes marœna); the black-fish (Gadopsis marmoratus); the Murray cat-fish (Copidoglanis tandanus); the gudgeon or trout of colonists (Galaxias ocellatus and G. attenuatus); the eel (Anguilla Australis); the large conger eel (Conger Wilsoni); the flounder (Rhombosolea flesoides and Pleuronecties Victoriæ); the flat-head (Platycephalus Tasmanicus); the gar-fish (Hemiramphus intermedius); the whiting (Sillago maculata); the chimera (Callorhynchus antarcticus); the common skate (Raya Lemprieri); the sting-ray (Myliobates aquila); the dog-fish (Galeus canis and Mustela vulgaris); and the large shark (Odontaspis taurus).

Of the aquatic mammals may be mentioned the whale (Physalus Grayi—McCoy), the species commonly stranded in Victoria, and eaten by the natives; and the porpoise (Delphinus fulvifasciatus); and of the marine carnivorous mammalia, the sea-leopard (Stenorhynchus leptonyx), and the eared seal, Otaria (Arctocephalus) lobatus.