74 BRITISH SPORTING FISHES. 



many of the water-birds reject them. In an 

 extemporised aquarium half-a-dozen loach are 

 swimming before me. With the light full upon 

 them they seem but little inclined to come from 

 among their sheltering gravel, though now and 

 again one of them takes a turn round the little 

 world of waters to see what it can pick up. 

 These little hermits are pugnacious enough, and 

 show desperate fight when one offers to invade 

 the domain of its neighbour. The most striking 

 characteristic of the fish are six barbules about 

 the mouth, which make them resemble barbels 

 in miniature. These testify to the fact of their 

 living at the bottom of streams, and using the 

 mouth as a sucker in search of food. These 

 barbules give the loach its popular name of 

 " beardie " ; it is also known as eelie and 

 eel-roach. A close cousin to the loach, and 

 the only other British fish of the same genera, 

 is the spined-loach or grounding, a much rarer 

 species than the foregoing, and less widely dis- 

 tributed. Like most fishes the loach has the 

 power to take on itself the colour of the stream 

 which it haunts, and those before me are greenish 

 brown, spotted and clouded with darker brown, 

 and beneath pale, yellowish white. The irides 

 are blue ; a medial line runs along the body ; and 

 the tail is beautifully barred. Such a delicacy is 



