186 WHITE-BAIT. 



purpose of catching salmon, they entangled and de- 

 stroyed a great deal of the fry, both of the smelt and 

 the shad. The fry of the shad lingers a good while 

 in the fresh water before it enters into the salt. In 

 the Thames it remains about Greenwich during the 

 month of July. During the time that it remains it 

 is sought after as a great delicacy ; and the corporation 

 of London, as conservators of the river, in vain attempt 

 to monopolize it, under the name of WHITE-BAIT. As 

 this fry of the shad, when in the state of white-bait, is 

 very young, not above a month or six weeks old, 

 it contains only the mere rudiments of roes and milts ; 

 and thus they who have made a species of it, have 

 been put to some shifts in attempting to account for 

 the mode of its production. 



Besides the instinct which guides them to those 

 places where they can deposit their spawn in fresh 

 water, so shallow as that it can be acted upon and 

 warmed into life in the spring, the salmon appear 

 to have another inducement to quit the sea. At that 

 time it is covered with a parasitical insect, which, 

 . though the fact be not very well authenticated, is 

 supposed to cause a disagreeable itching in the surface 

 of its body. The natural history, and even the species 

 of this insect, is obscure ; and it has not been properly 

 studied ; neither is it known whether it feeds upon the 

 substance of the salmon, or merely attaches itself to 

 the body of that fish in the same manner that other 

 sea-insects attach themselves to rocks, marine plants, 

 the bottoms of ships and other substances, from which, 

 though they can get support, they cannot get any 

 nourishment. The fishers call this parasite the " sea- 



