562 Natural Historij in the English Comities : — 



vourable for fishing, I went to a small river called the Keekle," 

 to procure some minnows for bait. Leach calls them Len- 

 ciscus Phoxinus. There were a great many of the fry very 

 small. I procured a few of the larger size, full of roe, with 

 little white nodules on the head, and the brightness of the 

 belly discoloured, which renders them nearly useless as bait. 

 I intend trying if stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) will 

 answer the same purpose: our old master, Walton, says they 

 will ; and I do not see why they should not : but a noted old 

 angler tells me they will not do in the rivers hereabouts ; he has 

 tried them, and failed to take a single fish. The minnows I 

 placed in a large jar of water. 



17th. This morning, in a small rivulet called the Poe- 

 beck, and running into Whitehaven harbour, I took a good 

 many of the stickleback, several more than two inches long. 

 On opening one of these, I found it full of roe ; the pellets 

 small, and of a watery consistency and colour ; the brightness 

 of the fish discoloured. Of those I caught, the greater num- 

 ber were little more than an inch long, and much brighter 

 than the larger ones. I observed two of them fighting in the 

 water ; the upper one had got the under one on its side, and 

 apparently was attempting to pierce it : whether or not it 

 succeeded, I did not see. Your correspondent O., in his 

 entertaining account of them (Vol. III. p. 329 — 332.), says 

 they are very pugnacious. One was lying dead, probably 

 killed in a duel. I put them into the same jar with the min- 

 nows. Not long after they had been put into their new 

 habitation, they had eaten some worms, which their com- 

 panions, the minnows, would not touch : the minnows and 

 sticklebacks seemed to agree very well. In the same rivulet 

 •where I took them, there are no minnows; probably I may 

 try the experiment of breeding a colony of the latter in it. 



18th. Found all the larger sticklebacks dead this morn- 

 ing : they were females, and full of roe : the change, I suppose, 

 has killed them ; for they exhibited no appearance of injury. 

 The smaller ones are very lively, and seem to take kindly to 

 the change. The weather is very cold, which has kept all the 

 insect race at home, except a few stragglers of a large kind of 

 humble bee. 



19th. Rain having fallen, I went to fish in the Ehen, or 

 Gud, flowing from Ennerdale Lake to the sea, and was unsuc- 

 cessful: obtained an excellent specimen of Necrophagusspinipes 

 of Leach ; it was floating in a mill-dam, and probably had 

 been washed by the rain into the water, which had purified it 

 greatly. Several years ago, I remember picking one up at 

 St. Helen's, near Cockermouth, which gave out its smell so 



