NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 55 



LETTER XVIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Jitly 27^/6, 1768. 



DEAR SIR, I received your obliging and communicative letter of 

 June the 28th, while I was on a visit at a gentleman's house, where 

 I had neither books to turn to, nor leisure to sit down, to return you 

 an answer to many queries, which I wanted to resolve in the best 

 manner that I am able. 



A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could find 

 no such fish as the Gasterosteus pungitius : he found the Gasteros- 

 teus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in a basket, I packed a 

 little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks, male 

 and female ; the females big with spawn : some lamperns ; some 

 bull's heads ; but I could procure no minnows. This basket will 

 be in Fleet Street by eight this evening ; so I hope Mazel will have 

 them fresh and fair to-morrow morning. I gave some directions, 

 in a letter, to what particulars the engraver should be attentive.* 



Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reasonable 

 distance of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that town, and 

 procured several living specimens of loaches, which he brought, 

 safe and brisk, in a glass decanter. They were taken in the gullies 

 that were cut for watering the meadows. From these fishes (which 

 measured from two to four inches in length) I took the following 

 description: "The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid 

 appearance ; its back is mottled with irregular collections of small 

 black dots, not reaching much below the linea lateralis, as are the 

 back and tail fins ; a black line runs from each eye down to the 

 nose ; its belly is of a silvery white ; the upper jaw projects beyond 

 the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side ; 

 its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller ; the fin behind 

 its anus small ; its dorsal-fin large, containing eight spines ; its tail, 



* The obliging arid anxious disposition of Mr. White to forward the views and studies 

 of his correspondent are here shown, as also his own homely manner, and without 

 attributing any merit to himself of giving his opinion of such remedies as curing cancers 

 by toads. Mazel, the person to whom the specimens were addressed, was Pennant's 

 engraver, and his name also btands as the artist upon some of the plates of antiquities in 

 the original 4to edition. 



