MALACOPTEKYGII ABDOMINALES. 459 



request on the most delicate tables, and the use of it is 

 prescribed to convalescents. 



The Tinca is another dismemberment from the great 

 genus Cyprinus of Artedi, &c. The general colour of the 

 common tench {Tinea vulgaris) varies according to the purity 

 of the waters which it frequents; it is almost black in muddy 

 marshes, and of a very brilliant golden yellow in rapid 

 streams with sandy bottoms. Its tints also vary according 

 to age and sex, to nutriment and climate. 



The tench are found throughout the whole globe, in fresh 

 waters, but more especially in lakes and marshes ; for they 

 chiefly prefer stagnant and muddy waters. They seldom 

 exceed a foot in length, but some are much larger, and weigh 

 five or six pounds, or even, as Salviani tells us, as much as 

 twenty. 



The tench do not dread the rigours of winter, and many 

 naturalists are inclined to think that they pass the months of 

 the cold season buried, and perhaps in a lethargic state, in the 

 sub-aquatic mud. 



They feed on the same aliments as the carp, grow rapidly, 

 and multiply much. Their eggs are greenish, small, and so 

 numerous that Bloch has reckoned 297,000 in one female 

 that weighed about four pounds. When summer approaches 

 they seek, for the purpose of depositing their eggs, places 

 covered with aquatic herbage, to which they attach them- 

 selves. They are often observed to jump out of the water to 

 seize insects in their flight: their tenacity of life is very re- 

 markable. 



They are taken with nets, or with lines baited with worms, 

 and it is easy to people with them marshes, vivaria, muddy 

 dykes, and ponds ; but when any of them are introduced into 

 carp-ponds it is necessary that their number should be li- 

 mited, for their voracity would otherwise starve the carp, and 

 hinder them from growing. 



