128 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 



assigned to the roach in the scheme of Nature. Enormously 

 prolific, the race maintains itself well in spite of the ravages 

 of beasts, birds, and fishes of prey, and the more insidious 

 attacks of external and internal parasites, to which this fish 

 is peculiarly liable. Although in England the roach is not 

 esteemed as an article of food, it is of great importance as a 

 sporting fish, affording, more than any other, recreation to the 

 angling clubs in our crowded industrial centres. Therefore let 

 not him who can afford the supreme luxury of salmon-fishing 

 despise the lowly roach, for just as the security of wealth 

 depends upon the degree in which it is distributed, so the 

 privileges of sport can only be maintained by the sympathy 

 and co-operation of multitudes of its humbler disciples. 



The name " roach " is one of those apparently simple 

 words which baffle the philologist. One thing only is certain 

 about it, to wit, that it is cognate with the name of another 

 and wholly different fish, the ray, and the two names coalesce 

 in the German Roche, which is used to denote both roach and 

 ray. The origin and root meaning has been lost for ever. 



The roach is quite a pretty fish, with a deeply compressed, 

 but not ungraceful, body, and bold, well-shaped fins. The 

 scales are large, numbering only forty-two or forty- 

 * three along the lateral line ; they are rounded on the 

 free edge, and glitter with a silvery lustre imparted by a 

 substance called guanin in the epidermic cells. The exposed 

 parts of the scales are also dotted with dark pigment granules. 

 The general coloration is bluish or greenish on the back, 

 silvery on the sides with bluish reflections, and silvery-white 

 on the belly. The ventral and anal fins are stained red, the 

 pectoral light grey, with a ruddy tinge in large individuals, 

 the dorsal and caudal darker grey, more or less spotted with 

 red, the caudal fin being deeply and evenly divided into two 

 pointed lobes. The colour of the iris is generally a good 

 rough distinction in fish, but there are as many and various 

 estimates about that of the roach as there ever was about 



