156 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
by recalling the nimble, silvery, tiny fish which it took so much 
delicacy and quickness of hand to secure. 
The name “ bleak ”’ is of very appropriate significance, for it 
is founded on the most distinctive characteristic of the fish. 
When it was conferred upon it, automatically and involuntarily, 
like all good names, it meant “shining,” for that was the sense 
of the Anglo-Saxon é/ec. Afterwards it came to mean pale 
and wan, suggestive of desolation, but the root meaning is 
that of the Greek ¢déyew, to burn or shine. It is curious, 
therefore, to note that the words of such diverse suggestion as 
“bleak” and “flame” actually have arisen from a common 
source. Yet the two ideas appear not widely dissociated in 
this glittering little fish, for it is in blazing hot weather when 
you will most surely see him, hovering a few inches under 
the surface in any part of the Thames, darting after flies and 
taking samples of everything edible that floats down the stream. 
No longer are sewers allowed to discharge their noisome 
contents into the chief of English rivers, whereby bleak have 
been bereft of their happiest hunting-grounds ; for although 
they love the fairest streams, they are undoubtedly foul and 
indiscriminate feeders, and subject to great quantities of 
internal parasites. 
The colour scheme of the bleak is very delicate ; steel-blue 
to greenish on the back, bright silver on sides and belly, which 
are covered with delicate scales ; iris pale golden ; dorsal and 
caudal fins grey, the others semi-transparent and without 
definite tint. It betrays its kinship to the bream by the 
long base of the anal fin, and the sharp keel of the posterior 
abdomen. In size it is always diminutive, seldom exceeding 
four or five inches in length. 
The geographical range of the bleak seems to be co-extensive 
with that of the bream, save that it is not found in Ireland, nor, 
I think, in Wales. Besides the bleak, there are fifteen species 
of -Alburnus in Europe and Western Asia, some of them very 
closely resembling the British one. 
