40 SORTATION. 



5 rows the fish is a dace (L. vulgaris), always silvery, with a dorsal 

 about half as high again as its base is long. If there are 4 rows it 

 is either a roach (L. rutilus) or a rudd (L. erythrophthalmus), and the 

 rudd at once proclaims itself by its red eye, deeper build, and more 

 coppery hue, and by the dorsal fin being rather nearer the tail. The 

 rudd, too, has a habit of sticking out its under lip, so that it seems 

 longer than it really is, while in the roach the upper lip is always, 

 actually and apparently, a little the longer. If there are 3 rows of 

 scales between the line and the ventrals the fish is a chub (L. 

 cephahts), the back fin of which is only about a quarter as high as 

 the base is long, and the head of which is proportionately 

 stouter than in the other species, and is dashed with red 

 and gold. 



Two genera we have in which the edge of the abdomen is of un- 

 expected shape, being rounded in front of the ventrals and sharply 

 ridged behind them. These are Abramis (the breams), in which the 

 dorsal has a distinct spine, and Alburnus (the bleak), which is 

 without any trace of a spine. No one is likely to mistake the 

 slender bleak (Alburnus lucidus) for the deeply-built breams. The 

 bleak might have been grouped with the flying-fish, owing to the 

 lower lobe of its tail being frequently longer than the upper, but 

 the difference is not always invariably apparent, and is always 

 so slight that it seemed better to brigade him here with his family 

 relations. There are two breams, the bream (Abramis brama) and 

 the white bream (A. blicca) from which it can be distinguished 

 by the truer curve of its back, by the fins being brownish and 

 red, instead of bluish and red, by the lateral line having from 50 

 to 63 scales, instead of from 43 to 52, by the scales between the 

 line and the ventral fin being 6 or more, instead of 5 or 6, and 

 by its having one row of pharyngeal teeth instead of two. The 

 bream is often known as the carp bream, and the white bream 

 as the silver bream, in reference to the olive colour of the one, 

 and the lighter, whiter, and rosier hue of the other. 



We have now dealt with all those in which the abdomen is 

 rounded throughout, and rounded in the fore half and ridged in the 

 hinder half ; but are there none in which the abdomen is compressed 

 all along ? Certainly and our specimen fish is one of them. What 

 can it be? Let us look at its upper jaw. Does it project ? No. 

 Then it is not the anchovy (Engraulis), and its genus must be Clupea, 

 the only one left. 



But which of the five species is it ? Its back fin is nearer to the 

 head than to the tail, so it cannot be C. sprattus (the sprat) ; and it 

 is not nearer to the tail than to the head, so that it cannot be 

 C. pilchardus (the pilchard), which it would be if it had from 6 to 8 

 rays in its ventrals, or one of the two shads, C. alosa and C.finta, if 

 it had 9 or 10 rays in them. Its dorsal fin, then, is no nearer to the 

 head than to the tail, and there is only one species in which that is 

 so. The pilchard has the tip of the back fin at the centre of gravity, 

 which is not quite in the middle of the back, but when the dorsal is 

 exactly half-way between the snout and the base of the tail we 

 recognise the herring. Thus, by the trail of the herring, we have 

 come home, and the fish we have identified by eliminating what it 

 is not, is no other than the common bloater. 



