204 BRITISH FRESHWATER FISHES 



The flesh of the White Bream is of poor quaHty, 

 and as these fish are always lean and bony, and 

 never attain any size, they have practically no value 

 as food. They show little sport when hooked, and 

 I have known them come straight out of the water 

 as though they were dead, without even a wag of 

 the tail ; their greediness sometimes makes them 

 rather a nuisance to the angler, who would prefer 

 catching fish of more value. 



The Common Bream or Carp Bream {^Abramis 

 bramci) has a more projecting snout, a more inferior 

 mouth, and a smaller eye than the White Bream. 

 The pharyngeal teeth are in a single series, and this 

 is the chief reason for placing these species in 

 distinct genera. The dorsal fin has nine, exception- 

 ally eight or ten, branched rays, the anal twenty- 

 three to twenty-nine ; the lower caudal lobe is 

 notably longer than the upper. There are forty- 

 nine to fifty-seven scales in the lateral line, eleven 

 to fifteen in a transverse series from the origin of 

 the dorsal fin to the lateral line, and six to seven 

 and a half between the lateral line and the base 

 of the pelvic fin. Young examples are similar in 

 colour to the White Bream, and are generally con- 

 founded with that species under the name " Bream- 

 flat " ; the adults are greenish or brownish, with 

 brassy reflections on the sides and with blackish 

 fins. 



The Bream is found in Europe north of the 

 Pyrenees and the Alps, in Russian Turkestan, and 

 in Western Siberia. In our islands it is absent 

 from Scotland north of Loch Lomond and the 

 Firth of Forth, the western parts of Wales, and 



