THE PERCH 



53 



number, it may be, of fifty, it may be a hundred, continue the 

 general forward movement. One would say that they gleaned 

 every edible thing as they went, but no sooner are they ofF 

 the scene than another band succeeds, less numerous but larger 

 individually, and these, too, find much that is worth picking 

 up. They also pass on their way, comely fellows of from half 

 a pound to a pound in weight ; and next, if you are lucky, 

 you may detect a pair of patriarchs sailing slowing in. Great 

 perch seem to dispense with the gregarious habit, but I am 

 inclined to attribute this less to the exercise of choice than 

 to the force of circumstances. It seems likely that the shoal 

 originally consists, if not of the offspring of one pair of 

 parents, at least of young things from a common nursing 

 ground. Instinctively they herd together ; casualties, to which 

 subaqueous life is peculiarly prone, thin their ranks, until, 

 after four or five years, of the myriad fry which set out 

 together upon the voyage of life, only a few individuals, it 

 may be but two or three, survive to cruise over the old play- 

 ground, and, it must be confessed, to levy shameful toll upon 

 the rising generation of their own kind. Like most predatory 

 fish, big perch are not scrupulous in the matter of cannibalism, 

 and it often happens that the body of a niece or grandchild, 

 laid upon a night-line to lure a pike to his doom, proves fatally 

 irresistible to the appetite of a wicked uncle or gluttonous 

 grandsire. 



These observations apply more directly to the habits of 

 the perch in lakes, where this fish occurs in larger numbers 

 than in rivers. Indeed, despite the specific name o^ fluviatilis 

 — river-haunting — conferred upon the perch by Linnasus, this 

 fish must be regarded as more at home in still water than in 

 streams. At all events, its natural habits are more fully 

 developed in the former than they can be in the latter. In 

 rivers the perch finds comfort only in still and deep reaches 

 and backwaters ; floods interfere with its gregarious inclination 

 and break up the great shoals into little companies ; it is never 



