iS6 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 



by recalling the nimble, silvery, tiny fish which it took so much 

 delicacy and quickness of hand to secure. 



The name " bleak " is of very appropriate significance, for it 

 is founded on the most distinctive characteristic of the fish. 

 When it was conferred upon it, automatically and involuntarily, 

 like all good names, it meant '* shining," for that was the sense 

 of the Anglo-Saxon Mac, Afterwards it came to mean pale 

 and wan, suggestive of desolation, but the root meaning is 

 that of the Greek (^Xeyetv, to burn or shine. It is curious, 

 therefore, to note that the words of such diverse suggestion as 

 " bleak " and " flame " actually have arisen from a common 

 source. Yet the two ideas appear not widely dissociated in 

 this glittering little fish, for it is in blazing hot weather when 

 you will most surely see him, hovering a few inches under 

 the surface in any part of the Thames, darting after flies and 

 taking samples of everything edible that floats down the stream. 

 No longer are sewers allowed to discharge their noisome 

 contents into the chief of English rivers, whereby bleak have 

 been bereft of their happiest hunting-grounds ; for although 

 they love the fairest streams, they are undoubtedly foul and 

 indiscriminate feeders, and subject to great quantities of 

 internal parasites. 



The colour scheme of the bleak is very delicate ; steel-blue 

 to greenish on the back, bright silver on sides and belly, which 

 are covered with delicate scales ; iris pale golden ; dorsal and 

 caudal fins grey, the others semi-transparent and without 

 definite tint. It betrays its kinship to the bream by the 

 long base of the anal fin, and the sharp keel of the posterior 

 abdomen. In size it is always diminutive, seldom exceeding 

 four or five inches in length. 



The geographical range of the bleak seems to be co-extensive 

 with that of the bream, save that it is not found in Ireland, nor, 

 I think, in Wales. Besides the bleak, there are fifteen species 

 of zAlburnus in Europe and Western Asia, some of them very 

 closely resembling the British one. 



