THE MILLERS THUMB “lef 
marauders. But here again I am speaking on_ hearsay. 
Until somebody has the leisure and patience, and, it may 
be added, the humility, to devote systematic observation to 
the habits of this little fish, a degree of doubt must continue 
to surround its life-history. Exact science now extends over 
so vast a field that it is only by concentrating intelligence 
upon specific points that any advance in knowledge can 
be made, and fallacies extirpated one by one. There 
seems, indeed, to be some need for the alleged vigilance 
of the male fish over his progeny; for the Rev. W. 
Houghton has recorded that two females which he dissected 
in the middle of April not only had their ovaries full of 
eggs, ripe for laying, but contained in their stomachs a 
great number of eggs, and several newly-hatched fry of 
their own species. 
Mr. J. H. Keene, already quoted more than once as a 
trustworthy observer, must be credited with the destruction 
of one fallacy concerning the miller’s thumb, which has been 
copied from book to book and from edition to edition of 
various encyclopedias without question. Alexander Wilson, 
the naturalist (1766-1813), alleged that the flesh of miller’s 
thumb when boiled was red, like that of a salmon. Nothing 
could be simpler than to put this statement to the test, yet 
dozens of writers have repeated it without doing so, until 
Mr. Keene proved that it was without foundation by boiling 
the fish, and “ never yet did see the slightest approach of the 
flesh to a pink or red hue. It remains white, like the gudgeon, 
so far as my experience goes.”* Nevertheless, Mr. Keene 
speaks in high praise of this little fish as a gastronomic 
delicacy. 
Leonard Mascall, author of a Booke of Fishing with Hooke 
and Line (1590), was an early advocate of fish-culture, and 
considered the miller’s thumb by no means unworthy of 
attention. 
* The Practical Fisherman, p. 54. 
