128 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
assigned to the roach in the scheme of Nature. Enormously 
prolific, the race maintains itself well in spite of the ravages 
of beasts, birds, and fishes of prey, and the more insidious 
attacks of external and internal parasites, to which this fish 
is peculiarly liable. Although in England the roach is not 
esteemed as an article of food, it is of great importance as a 
sporting fish, affording, more than any other, recreation to the 
angling clubs in our crowded industrial centres. Therefore let 
not him who can afford the supreme luxury of salmon-fishing 
despise the lowly roach, for just as the security of wealth 
depends upon the degree in which it is distributed, so the 
privileges of sport can only be maintained by the sympathy 
and co-operation of multitudes of its humbler disciples. 
The name “roach” is one of those apparently simple 
words which baffle the philologist. One thing only is certain 
about it, to wit, that it is cognate with the name of another 
and wholly different fish, the ray, and the two names coalesce 
in the German Roche, which is used to denote both roach and 
ray. The origin and root meaning has been lost for ever. 
The roach is quite a pretty fish, with a deeply compressed, 
but not ungraceful, body, and bold, well-shaped fins. The 
scales are large, numbering only forty-two or forty- 
three along the lateral line ; they are rounded on the 
free edge, and glitter with a silvery lustre imparted by a 
substance called guanin in the epidermic cells. The exposed 
parts of the scales are also dotted with dark pigment granules. 
The general coloration is bluish or greenish on the back, 
silvery on the sides with bluish reflections, and silvery-white 
on the belly. The ventral and anal fins are stained red, the 
pectoral light grey, with a ruddy tinge in large individuals, 
the dorsal and caudal darker grey, more or less spotted with 
red, the caudal fin being deeply and evenly divided into two 
pointed lobes, The colour of the iris is generally a good 
rough distinction in fish, but there are as many and various 
estimates about that of the roach as there ever was about 
Appearance, 
