Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/474

450 "That is the 'Murray cod,' or 'cod-perch,'" said he, as he pointed to one of the results of the morning's work.

"What a splendid fish!" Fred exclaimed.

"What?—that!" said the Australian youth, with an air of contempt. "That's only a little one, and doesn't weigh more'n two pounds."

"How large do these fish grow?" queried Frank.

"Oh! we catch 'em weighing thirty or forty pounds," was the reply. "We bait with tree-frogs, and have to use strong lines, or they'd get away from us."

"They're pretty good eating," he continued, "but not so good as bream and trout; the trout were brought here from your country, and we're getting 'em all through the rivers of Australia, so folks tell me. They sent us the eggs, and the fish were hatched out here; and several kinds of European and American fishes have been introduced that way. We've a good many kinds of perch; how many I don't know, but the best is the golden perch of the Murray and the rivers running into it. We've got a black-fish, as we call him; he's black outside, but his flesh is white as snow, and he's splendid for eating.

"If you want to go trout-fishing, you can do so twenty miles from Melbourne and find all you want; they've been trying to raise salmon in Australia, but the rivers are too warm for 'em. Sometimes we read in the newspapers about somebody's catching a salmon, but it never amounts to much."