THE MILLERS THUMB 77 



marauders. But here again I am speaking on hearsay. 

 Until somebody has the leisure and patience, and, it may 

 be added, the humility, to devote systematic observation to 

 the habits of this little fish, a degree of doubt must continue 

 to surround its life-history. Exact science now extends over 

 so vast a field that it is only by concentrating intelligence 

 upon specific points that any advance in knowledge can 

 be made, and fallacies extirpated one by one. There 

 seems, indeed, to be some need for the alleged vigilance 

 of the male fish over his progeny ; for the Rev. W. 

 Houghton has recorded that two females which he dissected 

 in the middle of April not only had their ovaries full of 

 eggs, ripe for laying, but contained in their stomachs a 

 great number of eggs, and several newly-hatched fry of 

 their own species. 



Mr. J. H. Keene, already quoted more than once as a 

 trustworthy observer, must be credited with the destruction 

 of one fallacy concerning the miller's thumb, which has been 

 copied from book to book and from edition to edition of 

 various encyclopaedias without question. Alexander Wilson, 

 the naturalist (1766-18 13), alleged that the flesh of miller's 

 thumb when boiled was red, like that of a salmon. Nothing 

 could be simpler than to put this statement to the test, yet 

 dozens of writers have repeated it without doing so, until 

 Mr. Keene proved that it was without foundation by boiling 

 the fish, and " never yet did see the slightest approach of the 

 flesh to a pink or red hue. It remains white, like the gudgeon, 

 so far as my experience goes."* Nevertheless, Mr. Keene 

 speaks in high praise of this little fish as a gastronomic 

 delicacy. 



Leonard Mascall, author of a Booke of Fishing with Hooke 

 and Line (1590), was an early advocate of fish-culture, and 

 considered the miller's thumb by no means unworthy of 

 attention. 



* The Practical Fisherman, p. 54. 



