42 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
the perch, and to some careful etymologists it has appeared 
that darsch has been formed from perch by the softening of 
the initial consonant ; but Professor Skeat is of opinion that 
they are different words. Local pundits explain the East 
Anglian name “barse”’ to have arisen from the bars or 
stripes which distinguish this fish among all others. In fact, 
this explanation has been solemnly offered in a recent work 
of sterling merit, and highly readable withal, The Practical 
Fisherman, by J. H. Keene,* who quotes Mr. Manley, 
another writer upon angling, as his authority. 
The perch is, indeed, well named “ the striped fellow.” 
But for those conspicuous dark bars, he would be almost in- 
visible in his native haunts, moving ghost-like among waving 
water-weeds and over brown pebbles, which accord closely with 
the ashen-green tints that form the ground-colour of his back 
and sides. Indeed, the perch is quite the most conspicuous 
denizen of British inland waters, and the decorative effect 
of these stripes acts strangely at variance with the usual 
protective scheme of colour conferred upon fish and other 
animals exposed to attack from more powerful predatory 
species. 
This is the more puzzling inasmuch as, in other respects, 
the perch is not without provision for escaping observation. 
Protective It possesses in a high degree that peculiar property 
coloration. of skin which causes so many fish to adapt them- 
selves to their temporary background by assimilation to the 
prevailing tints thereof. When the perch haunts a dark 
bottom, the hue of its skin deepens ; in a chalk stream, where 
the bottom is light-coloured, this fish parts with its deep 
olive tints and assumes a yellowish-grey colour. But the 
characteristic dark bars always remain in the same relation 
of conspicuous contrast to the general skin tint. 
There is no evidence that these protective changes depend 
in the slightest degree upon the volition of the fish, nor that 
* London, 188t. 
