76 BRITISH SPORTING FISHES. 



waterside often find that they have caught a 

 veritable tartar when they pounce upon the 

 bullhead ; and Frank Buckland tells us that he 

 once received a little Grebe (Podeceps minor] 

 choked by a miller's-thumb. " The fish," he 

 says, "was so firmly fixed in the bird's mouth 

 that I found it would go neither backwards nor 

 forwards, so I could neither press it down the 

 -oesophagus nor pull it out altogether. Mr. Grebe 

 evidently was not aware that the miller's- 

 thumb was armed with two very sharp spikes 

 on each side of the gill-cover, and when the 

 fish found himself in trouble, he simply expanded 

 these spines, which fixed him so firmly in the 

 bird's mouth that it died from suffocation. I 

 have had two or three specimens sent me of 

 Kingfishers destroyed by bullheads sticking in 

 their throats." It is worthy of remark that the 

 presence of spines in a species becomes perfectly 

 well known to the larger predatory fishes, and 

 although trout will take the bullhead dead, eels 

 are the only fish which can manage it alive. 



The silvery Minnow is one of the prettiest 

 and most widely distributed of British fresh-water 

 fishes. It belongs to the Cyprinid<z> being the 

 tiniest of the fish of the carp kind, and not the least 

 beautiful. " The pink," Walton tells us, " makes 

 a dainty dish of meat," and to make a " minnow- 



