THE PERCH 53 
number, it may be, of fifty, it may be a hundred, continue the 
general forward movement. One would say that they gleaned 
every edible thing as they went, but no sooner are they off 
the scene than another band succeeds, less numerous but larger 
individually, and these, too, find much that is worth picking 
up. They also pass on their way, comely fellows of from half 
a pound to a pound in weight; and next, if you are lucky, 
you may detect a pair of patriarchs sailing slowing in. Great 
perch seem to dispense with the gregarious habit, but I am 
inclined to attribute this less to the exercise of choice than 
to the force of circumstances. It seems likely that the shoal 
originally consists, if not of the offspring of one pair of 
parents, at least of young things from a common nursing 
ground. Instinctively they herd together ; casualties, to which 
subaqueous life is peculiarly prone, thin their ranks, until, 
after four or five years, of the myriad fry which set out 
together upon the voyage of life, only a few individuals, it 
may be but two or three, survive to cruise over the old play- 
ground, and, it must be confessed, to levy shameful toll upon 
the rising generation of their own kind. Like most predatory 
fish, big perch are not scrupulous in the matter of cannibalism, 
and it often happens that the body of a niece or grandchild, 
laid upon a night-line to lure a pike to his doom, proves fatally 
irresistible to the appetite of a wicked uncle or gluttonous 
grandsire, 
These observations apply more directly to the habits of 
the perch in lakes, where this fish occurs in larger numbers 
than in rivers. Indeed, despite the specific name of fluviatilis 
—river-haunting—conferred upon the perch by Linnzus, this 
fish must be regarded as more at home in still water than in 
streams. At all events, its natural habits are more fully 
developed in the former than they can be in the latter. In 
rivers the perch finds comfort only in still and deep reaches 
and backwaters ; floods interfere with its gregarious inclination 
and break up the great shoals into little companies ; it is never 
