174 THE PERCH. 



perch, their colour being olive-green, banded with 

 brown ; and, like perch, they possess two dorsal 

 fins, the first one having shark spines. Living 

 examples have been on view at the Brighton 

 Aquarium ; and, in 1878, pike-perch were success- 

 fully acclimatised in this country by his Grace the 

 Duke of Bedford, in his lakes at Woburn Park, 

 Bedfordshire, where, no doubt, they were a desirable 

 addition to the local fauna : but in waters like 

 the Thames or Trent, Avon or Tay, and many 

 others, they would undoubtedly prove very danger- 

 ous intruders to the young salmon and trout 

 Pike-perch are excellent sporting fish, and, to 

 judge from their teeth, voracious as pike. They 

 are also considered good food-fish in most of the 

 continental cities, including Berlin, Leipzig, Ham- 

 burg, &c. An allied species, the L. Americana, 

 found in North American fresh waters, is now 

 artificially hatched in the United States in large 

 numbers; the earliest experiments to propagate 

 them having been made there by M tiller and Browne 

 in 1857. In 1880 the late Mr. Frank Buckland 

 had a perca-zander, weighing 8 Ibs., sent him from 

 Billingsgate Market, which had been imported with 

 several more from Russia. Buckland says, in his 

 Natural History of British Fishes, "The pike- 

 perch has a formidable back-fin, which consists of 

 fourteen rays, the longest of which ' is nearly three 

 inches." (Qy., of the 9 Ibs. specimen ?) "The point 

 of each ray is sharp as a needle, and the membrane 

 which covers each spine seems to make a retract- 

 ible sheath for the point. The teeth are, indeed, 

 most formidable. At the tip of the upper and of 

 the lower jaw there are two teeth, conical and ex- 

 ceedingly sharp. Those in the lower jaw fit into 



