466 Mr. Yarrell's Remarks on English Fishes, 



at or very soon after the time the aduli fishes had shed their ova. There 

 was also this obvious and invariable distinction between young Shads and 

 Whitebait: the latter never exhibited any trace of the spots on the sides 

 so conspicuous in the Shads. The Shads, on the contrary, were never 

 without some indication of these peculiar spots, though their number and 

 intensity of colour appeared to depend on the strength and condition of 

 the fish. The first spot immediately behind the operculum however is 

 never wanting ; some of the young Shads taken in July and August ex- 

 hibited as many as five spots, of which the specimen figured was an 

 example, but the youngest as well as the weakest invariably possess one 

 spot behind the upper part of the edge of the operculum; even the young 

 Shads of 2J inches only, taken in November, the smallest I have been 

 able to procure, have this distinction, and in this state most resemble 

 Whitebait ; but I may add in conclusion, as an invariable point of dis- 

 tinction between the two fishes, that I have never seen a Whitebait of any 

 age or size with this spot, or a Shad without it. 



On shewing a series of specimens of these two fishes to M. Valenciennes 

 during his late visit to London, that gentleman, who has made this 

 branch of Natural History his particular study, stated that he considered 

 them decidedly different. 



In proposing the term alha as a specific distinction for the Whitebait, 

 in a former paper, I by no means intended to be understood as supposing 

 that this fish had remained as yet undescribed by Continental Naturalists, 

 I only desired to claim for this distinct species an appropriate appella- 

 tion in our list of British Fishes. It may be " Le Pretre ou Spret de 

 " Calais, le Franc-Blaquet ou Franche Blanche," four names given by 

 Duhamel to one small species of Clupea, though his figure is not like our 

 fish ; yet as the Whitebait frequents the Thames every summer, it is not 

 unlikely that it should be taken at Calais. 



Sir Everard Home, in his recently published additional volumes on 

 Comparative Anatomy (Vol. V. c. 4, sect. 1, page 232 and Vol. VI. 

 plate 28) has inferred, from certain resemblances in the ova and serrated 

 abdominal edges of four fishes of the genus Clupea, that the Whitebait is 

 a young Shad, and the Sprat a young Herring. Dr. Fleming, in his 

 History of British animals, published in 1828, does not allow the Sprat 

 a place among his fishes, and at page 183, after giving the specific cha- 



