OHAP. I.] SHAD. 25 



that that fish was once thought to l>e the young of the shad, 

 which is itself an interesting fish, coming, as we have been 

 told by some naturalists, from the sea to deposit 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 

 ^ater, that it was not till many years had elapsed that the 

 question was set at rest so far as to determine at anyrate that 

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

 shad, which, by the by, are coarse and insipid 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 its never being found with milt or roe would go 

 some length in proving it a distinct species. What was 

 only hinted at in the first edition of this work, namely, that 

 whitebait were young herrings, may at length be asserted 

 as truth. Dr. Gunther has determined this fact pretty con- 

 clusively. Not wishing to be dogmatic, I refrained from 

 giving my own opinion on the question of the whitebait 

 mystery, and it may sound quite a second-hand opinion now 

 to say that I thoroughly agree in the conclusion arrived at by 

 Dr. Gunther, and published in the 7th volume of the Catalogue 

 of Fishes in the British Museum. My argument as to the 

 whitebait was contained in the very simple question, " Where 

 are the parent fish ? " I never yet saw a whitebait that was 

 more than half the size of a sprat. But the whitebait of a 



