106 



FISHES A15D PISHING. 



high up as Teddington — a blow with the flat of the 

 scull kills them. I have taken this worm out of the 

 fish alive frequently ; some have been seven inches 

 long, others from that length to ten inches, about 

 three-tenths of an inch in width, coming to a blunt 

 point at each end, and one- tenth of an inch, or more, 

 thick in the middle, ribbed across. There is no 

 doubt but these worms must destroy the fish even- 

 tually, but what becomes of the worm afterwards no 

 one can tell. As the fish thus affected are only found 

 where the Thames is turbid, I imagine these worms 

 are generated through the foul state of the water.* 



In the first volume of the Mirror, published in 1 826, 

 article '* Medical Quackery," it is stated that these 

 worms are used by quack worm-doctors, to exhibit in 

 their windows, as having been expelled * from the 

 human body by the efficacy of the empiric's medicine ; 

 and of a verity the worms exhibited by these impos- 

 tors are so marvellously like those which torment the 

 poor bleak, that any person comparing them together 

 would pronounce them to be the same. 



The scales of the bleak formerly furnished the 

 means of making artificial pearls; it is estimated 

 that one pound of scales cost the lives of 4,000 fish, 

 that a pound of scales only produced four ounces of 



* I do not think any naturalist has noticed this disease of the 

 bleak. 



