DACE KOACH MINNOW. 385 



species is sometimes found fourteen inches long. It is 

 found in the Susquehanna, but not high up the mountain 

 streams. 



LEUCISCUS atronasus. ARGYREUS atronasus. Black-nosed 

 dace. (?) Dace, running chub, is common all over the State. 

 Length, 3J inches. 



LEUCISCUS argenteus. Silvery dace. (?) 

 LEUCISCUS nitidus. White dace, shiner. (?) 

 LEUCISCUS pygmseus. Pigmy shiner. This is said to be 

 the smallest of the American cyprinidse, its length being 

 only one inch. 



LEUCISCUS rutilus. Roach. This beautiful, familiar, 

 almost friendly and domestic little fish, is common in all the 

 runs of the mountain. It infests every brook, playing in 

 their smallest beds without shyness, and darting and seizing 

 as food almost anything that falls into the water. Every 

 boy will remember him as his first trophy with string and 

 pin-hook, his first Waltonian dream, when 



"Sauntering 'long and listless,' as Tennyson has it, 

 Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbadiboyhood." 



Length, four or five inches. 



HYDRARGYRA. Minnow. This, and some of the pre- 

 ceding genera, are extensively distributed. They crowd the 

 streams, and are the "shiners" of the boys' sport, being 

 small, graceful fish, with a variety of metallic reflections. 

 The mountain waters abound with them up to the spot 

 where the springs boil up from the sand. Every little 

 rivulet is alive with them, of every dimension, from the almost 

 invisible fish-shaped atom, to individuals of three or four 

 inches in length. They are tame and fearless, and can be 

 seen at all times in shoals through the transparent ice, even 

 in the coldest weather as lively as in August or July. Their 

 bright-polished sides, tinged with silver and bronze, flash 

 in every pool, and their delicate forms glide from every grass- 

 tuft and overhanging bank of the mountain brooks. They 

 are very prolific. Dekay enumerates three species belonging 

 to New York. 



33 



