258 THE YOUNG 



For carp, tench, eels, perch, and bream, fresh grains will be 

 found very serviceable ; they must be perfectly fresh. 



Gentles and worms may be thrown in without taking the trouble 

 of working them into balls or clay, if the water is perfectly stiil ; 

 but if you are fishing in a stream, such a system of ground baiting 

 is injurious, as the gentles are carried away by the stream, and draw 

 the fish from the spot. 



HOW A FISH IS FORMED. 



Before giving our young readers a description of the different 

 varieties of fishes they may chance to take at times, we shall first 

 attempt to show what a fish is like, and why it is neither flesh 

 nor fowl, though some say the sturgeon partakes of all three. 

 Most fishes are covered with scales ; as the knights of old were 

 sheathed in scale armour, so are fishes protected by these scales. 

 They have a backbone, and instead of lungs breathe through their 

 gills, through which pass the water and air they take into their 

 mouths ; and that is the way they live and breathe. They have also 

 a " swimming bladder" under the spine, by compressing or expand- 

 ing which they are enabled to sink down like a leaden bullet, or 

 rise up light as a bird springing into the air. Their very forms are 

 built for swimming, and their motions in the water in some measure 

 resemble that of birds in the air ; their fins are their wings, their 

 tails the rudder, and they use the latter as a boy does a single oar 

 in the stern of a boat, and can row themselves along with it at im- 

 measurable speed. You all know the prickly fin on the back of the 

 perch that is the dorsal fin of a fish ; that before the little one next 

 the tail is the ventral fin ; and these balance the fish, and thus 

 prevent it rolling over ; while the pectoral fin, the one on the 

 breast, is used by the fish in pushing itself forward, and is a kind 

 of screw in the fish engine, while the caudal or tail fins are paddles, 

 sails, screws, rudders, oars, or anything you please to imagine, that 

 gives the fish both steerage and rapid motion. The eye of the fish 

 is beautifully adapted for seeing in the water. 



Every boy, though he has eaten only a red herring, knows what the 

 roe of a fish is. The codfish and salmon contain millions of these little 

 eggs, and were they all to come to life, and neither be devoured nor 

 destroyed, instead of not being able to see the wood for trees, we 

 should neither see the river nor the ocean for fishes. 



We shall now proceed to give an account of the different kinds of 

 fish which are found in the rivers of Great Britain, and the best 

 means to be adopted to catch them ; and we will finish each fish as 

 we go on, leaving only the bones. 



THE STICKLEBACK, AND HOW TO CATCH HIM. 



This little quarrelsome fellow for he 

 is a terrible fighter, and would kick up 

 a shindy were he as big as a whale 

 is seldom more than two inches long, 

 and marked with the most beautiful 

 crimson, green, and golden colours the 



