fa BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
the same time of year as the perch, the yellow eggs being 
woven in festoons after the manner in vogue with that fish. 
In short, the ruffe may be described as to character and habit 
as an unwarlike, mild-mannered perch. Izaak Walton vouches 
for its excellence on the table, declaring that “no fish that 
swims is of a pleasanter taste.” The greater the pity, then, 
that there is so little flesh in the diminutive carcase. 
My own experience of the pope as a sporting fish is of 
limited extent and of very ancient date. It used to be plentiful 
Angling in the muddy waters of the canal at Leamington, near 
for Pope. my old school, and gave us diversion on Saturday 
afternoons in far-off summers. Fine tackle, a light float, and 
a red worm on a small hook are pretty sure to produce samples 
of the ruffe in such waters as it inhabits. But in no part of 
Britain is the ruffe found in such numbers as in the Norfolk 
Broads, where anglers are often disgusted and driven to 
another beat by the persistent biting at the bait by shoals 
of these little fish, the ‘poor relations” of the perch, which 
is the coveted quarry. 
The fatal consequences of inheriting a bad name are 
proverbial. It proved to be a cruel destiny that conferred 
the title of “pope” upon an inoffensive creature in Protestant 
England, for it has exposed it to persecution of a peculiarly 
barbarous and senseless kind, which, unless the influence of 
school boards has prevailed to suppress it, continues at the 
present time. Frank Buckland described how the people of 
Sheffield and other large towns used to go in hundreds to a 
place well-named Crewell Bridge, in Lincolnshire, where these 
fish abound. Every pope caught had a cork impaled on its 
dorsal spine, and was set at liberty, until the surface of the 
canal for miles was covered with bobbing corks. Of course 
all these luckless fish were doomed to a lingering death. 
ww . 
