128 FISH CULTURE. 



the same amount of pains were bestowed upon them, 

 would be equally delicious. I greatly doubt this ; 

 nay, I utterly repudiate it, and refuse to believe it. 

 In matters of this especial kind I am inclined to 

 think that whatever is is. For example, turtle-soup 

 is, and the man who says that mock-turtle is equally 

 good is (not a judge, at any rate). The nearest thing 

 as a delicacy to whitebait is a dish of very small 

 bleak. 1 They are delicious ; nay, the larger bleak, 

 cooked in the way that sprats are cooked, form an 

 excellent dish, and are scarcely inferior to gudgeon. 

 Having accidentally passed over the bleak, I inci- 

 dentally mention it here. It is a fish too well known, 

 though of too small importance, to need any great 

 space for description; and, as it is very much of a 

 surface-feeding fish, it takes little from the other fish, 

 and it affords an admirable source of food to the 

 more predatory fish also, as the pike, perch, and 

 trout ; and these do feed upon it largely. The move- 

 ments of a shoal of bleak on the surface of the water 

 are very interesting to watch ; and the rapidity of 

 its movements, and constant restlessness, as it darts 



1 I should have added above, that the bleak also for a time 

 struggled for the honour of paternity to the whitebait, but was 

 soon put out of court. 



