156 THE PERCH. 



places that are much fished in, though some few may still remain, 

 they are usually small, the greater part coming to an untimely end 

 long ere they have time to arrive at maturity : and from the ob- 

 servations I have been enabled to make, I am inclined to think 

 they increase in bulk but slowly, whilst in some waters, live as 

 long as they may, they will never attain to any considerable size. 

 I well recollect a pond where the water being partially let off all 

 the perch died in consequence, and were for some time afterwards 

 to be seen floating about on the surface. Of these by far the 

 greater proportion were fish of about six ounces weight, which I 

 do not believe any one exceeded, and this led me to conclude that 

 this was the maximum of size they would have attained in those 

 waters, which had not been left off before for several years. It 

 is remarkable, that although every perch the pond contained had 

 thus perished from a deficient supply of water, no other kind of 

 fish appeared to be affected by it, although out of its native ele- 

 ment few fish survive so long as the perch. We observed some 

 trout apparently healthy still moving about in the diminished 

 waters, though at a time when the stench from the dead perch 

 was most abominable ; we also noticed a shoal of small roach 

 swimming about apparently unaffected by their loathsome situation. 

 But it seems that salt or brackish water does not prove so fatal to 

 perch as to most other fresh water fishes. When the sea a few 

 years since broke into Slapton lea lake in Devonshire, though most 

 of the pike died, yet the perch were apparently uninjured by the 

 salt water ; and in streams affected by the tides, I have frequently 

 caught perch in a part of the river that at the time of high water 

 was quite brackish ; such I should imagine as no pike could 

 exist in. 



I have also remarked that perch are much more plentiful in the 

 lower parts of rivers near the sea, than towards the spring head, 

 though it is quite clear they never actually descend into the salt 

 water. In the Itchen and Test rivers in Hampshire, very few 

 perch are to be met with, except in the lower parts of those rivers ; 

 and I have also noticed that when perch have escaped from ponds 

 into brooks running into the sea, they have been far more plenti- 

 ful in the lower parts than near the pond they originally came from. 

 This I attribute in a great measure to the roving disposition of 

 this species of fish, and the inclination they have to inhabit exten- 

 sive waters. 



