THE BLEAK 155 
length or a pound in weight. It is a worthless fish, for which 
nobody has ever been heard to say a good word. It is needless, 
therefore, to refer to the methods of angling for “ tin-plates,” 
as fishermen call them, except to say that they are the same as 
for bream. In habits, and food also, the two fish are precisely 
similar, the breamflats bringing themselves prominently under 
notice in May, when they gather in shallow water, especially 
among bulrushes, and deposit their spawn and milt in riotous 
assemblage. 
The breams are represented in North America by several 
species, resembling the European breams, but generally having 
fewer rays in the anal fin. As already mentioned, the so-called 
Pomeranian bream (c4bramidopsis Leuckartii of Von Siebold) 
has been pretty well ascertained to be a fertile hybrid between 
the roach and the bream. It has been described by Gtinther 
as “a roach-like modification of the bream, or a bream-like 
modification of the roach.” It is to be noted that the 
sea-breams (Sparide) are not akin to the fresh-water breams, 
but form the fourth family of a totally different order—that 
of Acanthopterygii, or Spiny-finned Fishes. 
The Bleak (-4/burnus lucidus) 
FINS. | TEETH. 
Dorsal: 10 or iI rays. Pharyngeal only, in two rows, 
Anal: 18 to 23 rays. hooked. 
Ventral: g or to rays. 
Pectoral: 15 to 17 rays. 
Caudal: 1g rays. 
Sixteen hundred years ago Ausonius, describing waterside 
life on the Moselle, noticed the sport which schoolboys found 
in catching bleak. The relations between boys and bleak 
remain unchanged ; many a salmon-fisher, hardly to be satisfied 
now with less than a thirty-pounder in the full sweep of a 
Norwegian torrent, may trace his craftsmanship to its source 
