NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 55 
bE TEBE, Veith 
TO THE SAME. 
SELBORNE, Fuly 27th, 1768. 
DEAR SIR,—I received your obliging and communicative letter of 
June the 28th, while I was on a visit at a gentleman’s house, where - 
I had neither books to turn to, nor leisure to sit down, to return you 
an answer to many queries, which I wanted to resolve in the best 
manner that I am able. 
A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could find 
no such fish as the Gasterosteus pungitius: he found the Gasteros- 
Zeus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in a basket, I packed a 
little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks, male 
and female ; the females big with spawn: some lamperns ; some 
bull’s heads; but I could procure no minnows. This basket will 
be in Fleet Street by eight this evening; so J hope Mazel will have 
them fresh and fair to-morrow morning. I gave some directions, 
in a letter, to what particulars the engraver should be attentive.* 
Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reasonable 
distance of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that town, and 
procured several living specimens of loaches, which he brought, 
safe and brisk, in a glass decanter. They were taken in the gullies 
that were cut for watering the meadows. From these fishes (which 
measured from two to four inches in length) I took the following 
description: “The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid 
appearance ; its back is mottled with irregular collections of small 
black dots, not reaching much below the “zea lateralis,as are the 
back and tail fins; a black line runs from each eye down to the 
nose ; its belly is of a silvery white ; the upper jaw projects beyond 
the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side; 
its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller ; the fin behind 
its anus small ; its dorsal-fin large, containing eight spines ; its tail, 
* The obliging and anxious disposition of Mr. White to forward the views and studies 
of his correspondent are here shown, as also his own homely manner, and without 
attributing any merit to himself of giving his opinion of such remedies as curing cancers 
by toads. Mazel, the person to whom the specimens were addressed, was Pennant’s 
engraver, and his name also stands as the artist upon some of the plates of antiquities in 
the original 4to edition. 
