CHAP, i.] SHAD. 25 



remarks, if the salmon are not first sent down the Thames 

 they cannot be expected ever to come up that noble river. 



Eeturning, however, to our whitebait, it may be stated 

 that that fish was once thought to be the young of the shad, 

 which is itself an interesting fish, coming from the sea to de- 

 posit its spawn in the fresh waters. The shad was at one time 

 thought to be the patriarch of the herring tribe ; and it was 

 said, in the days when the old theory about the migration of 

 the herring was believed in, that the great shoals which came 

 to this country from the icy seas of the high latitudes were 

 led on their wonderful tour by a few thousands of this gigantic 

 fish. Pennant conjectured that whitebait was an independent 

 species, but so difficult is it to investigate such facts in the 

 water that it was not till many years had elapsed that the 

 question was set at rest so far as to determine at any rate that 

 whitebait were not the young of either the Alice or the Twaite 

 shad, which, by the by, is a coarse and insipid fish 



" Alusce, crackling on the embers, are 

 Of wretched poverty the insipid fare." 



Some investigations I have in hand may settle the question 

 whether or not the whitebait be herring-fry or a distinct fish. 

 As yet I have never at any season of the year found an 

 example of whitebait containing either milt or roe, although 

 it is said that examples may be taken full of both dur- 

 ing the early winter months. This, of course, is not con- 

 clusive evidence of its being the young of some other fish, 

 although it would go some length in proving it a distinct 

 species ; but I need not enter further into the controversy at 

 present, as it is not of much interest to the general reader, 

 except to say that whitebait, whatever species it may belong 

 to, comes up from the sea, where it has been spawned, to feed 

 in the river. I may mention that this fish cannot now be 

 taken so far up the river Thames as formerly. Whitebait are 

 now usually caught between Gravesend and Woolwich, and 



